Re: Proposal for an Emacs User Survey

[Jean Louis]

* Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> [2020-10-17 00:02]:
> GNU Emacs is not generally a commodity.  (It's always
> a product.  Not every product is a commodity, even in
> what is generally a "market" economy.)

> Commodity production: Products are produced with an eye to being
> sold.  Selling and sales value are taken into account during
> production - they are part of the character of the product, as
> commodity.  This is _production for exchange_.

Not necessarily, products can be natural, produced by nature,
collected and sold, it can be still a product and commodity. It need
not have a vision to be sold. Example are minerals, example are
natural products collected by people and sold, let us say forest
mushrooms, it is product and commodity.

GNU Emacs was sold by GNU and is (probably) sold today by various
Emacs promoters, I guess with books or DVD or similar. If it is sold
or not currently does not make it less of a commodity, it could be
sold, just as GNU/Linux full OSes can be sold, as nobody forbids it.

It is exchangeable for money.

Software as a community product and community commodity is
exchangeable too, we can see that because it is free software, it
moves people to create more free software, share and help others. That
is the exchange that Emacs is creating itself.

If you consider commodity only that what is exchanged for dollars,
consider that before paper currencies there was maybe gold or shelves,
or something else, like goats maybe, so at that time you could
exchange GNU Emacs for a GNU Goat for example, and it would be just
fine commodity without currency.

> The notes you write to yourself (in Org mode or whatever) are useful
> to you, and they weren't written with an eye to being sold.

In particular on my side, I write instruction manuals that I do sell
to my clients. Yet I get your point, but see above, products need not
have in their creation the purpose to be sold, even though Emacs was
sold by GNU project and FSF in past, maybe not today, but it was sold
on CDs as source software or bundled with GNU software together, and
is sold today by various individuals and companies, sometimes on
CD/DVD with the book or instructions, more often in commercial
GNU/Linux distributions, it need not be in English language, it can be
Japanese language or other countries. GNU/Linux with GNU Emacs is sold
here in Uganda, that is what I can say that I have seen practically,
you come and you can buy it on DVD all together. So it is part of OS
and can be sold with the OS.

You probably want to say that it is not common for you to find GNU
Emacs being sold, you do not consider it commodity.

I am giving you few examples that you see it is indirectly sold,
sometimes directly on DVD with books about Emacs, and as part of
GNU/Linux distributions, probably other distributions as well. It is
probably bundled with many BSD-based OSes as well which are sold as
DVD, like shoplinuxonline.com

It may not be common to you, as you download it, yet there are people
who cannot and who need DVD, and they will buy it.

The last big exchange that Emacs is creating is donations to Free
Software Foundation and supporting GNU infrastructure and its
management.

There is nothing wrong calling it a product or commodity.

Surely I understand your viewpoint, it is not a common for Emacs to be
sold, but it is sold, I gave you few references.

It is special commodity of its own kind.

Note that there are countries without good Internet access, Internet
may be expensive, where DVDs are quite popular in those countries,
where software is sold on DVD and not accessible online. It is cheaper
to purchase DVD with software then download it in those places.

Free software movement have already made OS sellers like Red Hat and
so many others to change into different direction, it also introduced
it to Microsoft and other proprietary companies, but that all does not
make it less of a product, as it is product of human effort, so it is
exchangeable, if not for money then for donations, goodwill,
contributions to the code, it is exchange of effort, so free software
is currency within the community of free software.