On 8/20/24 02:52, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
...

It is no complain, merely stating an elementary economic fact. If the
price does not reflect the costs, there is no market. No market, no competition. No competition, no quality.

The problem with that theory is that it doesn't line up with facts, at
least, not as I've seen them. Free software is often of comparable or
greater quality than commercial software, partly because a lot more eyes
have examined the code for bugs. For several decades now, virtually all
of my software needs have been met by free software of adequate quality
for my needs. The only software I've paid for in years is cheap
smartphone games that my kids insist on playing - but what I'm paying
for is the marketing that convinced my kids they "need" the game, not
the quality of the game itself.

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I originally posted this a couple of days ago, to the wrong newsgroup.
Sorry.

On 8/18/24 15:24, Keith Thompson wrote:

David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> writes:
[...]

Without looking it up, what does the C standard library "fegetmode"
function do?

Nothing, it's specific to GNU libc.

? It's in every draft version of the C standard that I have since
n2346.pdf, dated 2019-03-13. In the latest draft I have, n3096.pdf, it
is described as follows:

7.6.5.1
"The fegetmode function
Synopsis
#include <fenv.h>
int fegetmode(femode_t *modep);

Description
The fegetmode function attempts to store all the dynamic floating-point
control modes in the object pointed to by modep.

Returns
The fegetmode function returns zero if the modes were successfully
stored. Otherwise, it returns a nonzero value."

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On Tue, 20 Aug 2024 09:59:11 -0400, James Kuyper wrote:

On 8/20/24 02:52, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
...

It is no complain, merely stating an elementary economic fact. If the
price does not reflect the costs, there is no market. No market, no
competition. No competition, no quality.

The problem with that theory is that it doesn't line up with facts, at
least, not as I've seen them. Free software is often of comparable or
greater quality than commercial software, partly because a lot more eyes
have examined the code for bugs.

Free software is still subject to the same laws of economics, but it
changes the way the equation is applied.

Proprietary software is built on the concept of “artificial scarcity”: the cost of making copies of the software is inflated through the threat of lawsuits for copyright infringement, thereby making it more economical to
keep paying more money to the copyright owners.

Free software doesn’t bother trying to make scarce that which is not naturally scarce: the software itself is freely copyable, but of course
the skills in developing and maintaining it, and also in adapting it for different uses, are a different matter. Such a model also works because it results in better alignment between the customer’s needs and those of the software developer.

Think of it as the old “give away the razor, sell the razor blades” idea
in a new form.

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