[mattadams]

Bullshit. Free market or not, that's an entirely one dimensional view on the value of software. Plenty of software has value -- the software that makes a business more productive, competitive or saves it money has inherent value, not to mention applications in other areas.

Competent business owners, managers and technical people making decisions about the implementation of software are very interested in the value of that software and its value to business is exactly why we have an economy that exchanges money for these things.

[dbingham]

I wasn't just talking about software. I was talking about movies, books, music, images, anything that can be digitized. As soon as it's digital, there's a nearly infinite supply. Unless you can find a way to limit that supply the price (sorry, I meant price when I said value) will drop to zero. We currently have legal methods of limiting that supply -- by giving the creator legal control of how digital things get copied. But the difficulty of stamping out piracy even with these legal counter-measures is a testament to how artificial that really is.

There are some cases where it is possible to limit the supply of digital goods, and this is best seen in software where access to the code can be limited or the code can be written to be restricted in some way, especially in compiled software or web applications. But this, too, can often be hacked.

Note, I'm no fan of free markets. I think they are an enormously clumsy tool for linking 'price' to 'value'.

[mattadams]

Fair enough. I really thought you were advocating something else.