Comparing prices skips software freedom

[Alexander H.M. Ruoff]

I have to agree... different people have different reasons and price is
one of them. But consider that, how much does it cost you when you PC
crashes with some critical work? It's not only the time you loose but
also the work.

So most people and definitely most companies should calculate which OS
is really the cheapest, either MS Windows with their famous bluescreen
or some of the commercial Linux distributions with all the services and
support?

When MS talks about prices, I wonder whether I can charge them for the
loss of time and work I had due to system-crashes Win98 and Win2k? 

Alex

On Wed, 2004-02-18 at 19:58, J.B. Nicholson-Owens wrote:
> Rui Miguel Seabra wrote:
> > Do the prices for
> > MS XP Home + Equivalent Developer Tools + Adobe Photoshop + Decent Maths
> > program + Complete Office suite + ....
> > 
> > Just so you make a fair comparison.
> 
> And what price shall I place on software freedom?  I view software freedom
> as a bona-fide feature and I'm willing to pay for it.  I know that software
> freedom doesn't mean a lot to some people, but it means a lot to me and I
> don't know what price to put on it, even if I just talk about the practical
> outcome of having it.  Microsoft will not let me buy a copy of Microsoft
> Windows licensed under a free software license at any price, so I'm tempted
> to say that the value of software freedom makes the price of Microsoft
> Windows too high, even if I get a copy at no charge.  Many proprietary
> programs won't let me install more than one copy on separate computers and
> run them all at the same time (even though I have more than one computer in
> my house).  Software freedom is the one thing no proprietor can supply and
> yet it's what I want.