[quanticle]

>It's difficult to say what would have happened, but you cannot deny that prices for corporate UNIX DID in fact exist, and they were not getting paid due to the availability of the free option.

Yes, this is the problem of "the seen and the unseen" in economics. Prices for corporate Unix did exist, and they are not getting paid now. That is the seen. What is unseen is the value that was created by having a cheap (Linux isn't free --- you still need to pay people to set it up, patch it, provide support, etc) operating system that was available to anyone with an Internet connection. Would Google exist without Linux? Absolutely not. Would the iPod exist without Linux? No. What about all the value created by smartphones?

When balancing all of those against the profits of proprietary Unix vendors, I feel comfortable in saying that the existence of Linux is a giant net positive for the world, even if it did result in the proprietary Unix vendors going out of business.

[samsquire]

Yes, I accept all the value that was generated by Linux is tangible and it's extreme.

I'm thinking from the principle of work: if you do some work for someone and it is not reimbursed, then it's obviously good for the people receiving your work but not necessarily the people working.

It's not the revenue from corporate UNIX that I'm thinking of, it's the being reimbursed for your work problem. The potential value produced by the non-free thing was destroyed.

Earning money is hard enough as it is, but today everyone expects everyone else to work for them for free, with nothing in return. If people stopped working on open source for free, would the value still be created?

To reiterate my point in my comment: if free things produce more value than commercial things, why isn't everything free?

[fluoridation]

> Would Google exist without Linux? Absolutely not.

What are you saying? That Google as it exists now would not exist? That's probably correct. That no one else would have created an equivalent search engine? That's much less obvious.

> Would the iPod exist without Linux? No.

Why do you need a FOSS OS to make a portable digital audio player with a hard drive?

> What about all the value created by smartphones?

Why do you need a FOSS OS to make cell phones with integrated computers?

[pjmlp]

Since when does iPod have anything to do with Linux?!?