www/philosophy free-world-notes.html

[Pavel Kharitonov]

CVSROOT:        /web/www
Module name:    www
Changes by:     Pavel Kharitonov <ineiev>       12/09/27 06:00:29

Modified files:
        philosophy     : free-world-notes.html 

Log message:
        RT #773015: move the last entry off the list.
        
        Remove an unneeded space in "marketing/ sales";
        put first parts of multi-paragraph items in <p></p>.

CVSWeb URLs:
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/philosophy/free-world-notes.html?cvsroot=www&r1=1.8&r2=1.9

Patches:
Index: free-world-notes.html
===================================================================
RCS file: /web/www/www/philosophy/free-world-notes.html,v
retrieving revision 1.8
retrieving revision 1.9
diff -u -b -r1.8 -r1.9
--- free-world-notes.html       10 Jun 2012 08:06:12 -0000      1.8
+++ free-world-notes.html       27 Sep 2012 06:00:27 -0000      1.9
@@ -38,8 +38,8 @@
 <li>Commercial software companies typically divide their costs into
 several sectors: development; manufacturing; marketing/sales;
 service; general and administrative. Development costs are usually
-less than 20% of revenues. By far the largest cost is marketing/
-sales, so most of what the customer is actually paying for is the
+less than 20% of revenues. By far the largest cost is
+marketing/sales, so most of what the customer is actually paying for is the
 persuasion to convince the customer to pay so much for something
 that costs so little to develop, and practically nothing to
 reproduce and deliver.</li>
@@ -101,13 +101,13 @@
 competition kills profits, and successful companies are the ones that
 avoid competition, or at least are able to dictate its terms.</li>
 
-<li>The key thing here is that the free software must have at least the
+<li><p>The key thing here is that the free software must have at least the
 same level of quality and utility as the commercial software that
 it challenges, which means that it must be professionally designed
 and developed, tested and supported. Which means that free software
 must move well beyond its current niche as an academic hobby, to a
 point where it is supported by well-financed organizations that can
-attract and support quality workers.
+attract and support quality workers.</p>
 
 <p>Of course, Microsoft (and all other commercial software companies
 so threatened) will do their best to compete with free software,
@@ -142,12 +142,12 @@
 to make the world safe for computer viruses. I'm not an especially
 paranoid person, but how can you ever know?</p></li>
 
-<li>Consumers nowadays are so often (and so effectively) fleeced that
+<li><p>Consumers nowadays are so often (and so effectively) fleeced that
 there is much resistance to paying for something you can get away
 with not paying for, so this will be an uphill educational battle.
 There is a game theory problem here: Who should I commit to paying
 for a development which I can get for nothing if only I wait for
-someone else to pay for it? But if everyone waits, no one benefits.
+someone else to pay for it? But if everyone waits, no one benefits.</p>
 <p>
 There are other ways to handle this level of funding, such as
 imposing taxes on computer hardware (sort of like the gas tax is
@@ -179,7 +179,7 @@
 the costs for free software will decline over time, sharply except
 for the cases where new needs arise.</li>
 
-<li>Much of this work is already being done. What's missing is not so
+<li><p>Much of this work is already being done. What's missing is not so
 much the people or even the organization as a coherent sense of the
 economic imperatives. To date, free software has largely been
 driven by political sensibilities and the traditions of academic
@@ -191,7 +191,7 @@
 propping up empires when all we really want are clean, simple
 programs that do our work? And why do software professions have to
 work for commercial companies when their skills and work are more
-immediately needed by users?
+immediately needed by users?</p>
 <p>
 The argument that large companies (government, any organization
 that spends serious money on software) should routinely support
@@ -253,12 +253,12 @@
 offensive it may seem. The proposal here is to start to take short,
 deliberate, sensible steps toward reclaiming parts of that jungle
 for everyone's use and betterment.</p></li>
+</ol>
 
-<li>This implies, of course, that (following the Reagan demonology)
+<p>This implies, of course, that (following the Reagan demonology)
 Microsoft et al. are &ldquo;The Evil Empire.&rdquo; That's a joke, of
 course, but if it didn't harbor a shred of truth it wouldn't be
-funny.</li>
-</ol>
+funny.</p>
 
 </div>
 
@@ -287,7 +287,7 @@
 <p>
 Updated:
 <!-- timestamp start -->
-$Date: 2012/06/10 08:06:12 $
+$Date: 2012/09/27 06:00:27 $
 <!-- timestamp end -->
 </p>
 </div>