[Sfd] Bundaberg SFD Report

Robert Brockway rbrockway at opentrend.net
Wed Sep 14 04:19:56 UTC 2005


On Wed, 14 Sep 2005, Chris Walker wrote:

> An unexpected problem was the attitude of many passers-by who
> thought there must be a catch with the CD's being "Free" and
> didn't want to get caught by any scam or other sales pitch???
> They just couldn't understand they were given away for "Free"!

I've seen this many times before when advocating OSS.  During our Sunday 
SFD stall one visitor to the stall put it to me pointedly when he asked 
"What's the catch?".  I pointed out that no one at the stall stood to gain 
financially from anything that happened that day and that there was no 
catch in the sense one would expect from a company giving away apparently 
free goods.  I then suggested he try The OpenCD and use OO and other items 
of software if they did what he needed - this way he could save licencing 
fees in the future.  I then went on to point out it was perfectly legal to 
burn new copies of the CD, give that copy away to a friend, etc.  This 
only works if the passers by decides to ask this question of course.

I find this is a symptom of a larger problem in society, specifically that 
a good deal of the population are apparently convinced that the only 
reason a person would do anything, or do it well, is for personal 
financial gain.  Even a cursory view of human history would show how 
inaccurate this proposition is.  The capitialist system we use is of 
course a very recent development.  A good many ancient societies appear to 
have operated as gift economies (rather than barter economies as is often 
claimed).  In these societies OSS would appear natural, even obvious.

Rob

-- 
Robert Brockway B.Sc.		Phone:	+1-416-669-3073
Senior Technical Consultant	Email:	support at opentrend.net
OpenTrend Solutions Ltd.	Web:	www.opentrend.net
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