>> Some companies give stuff away for free, and it really *is* free.
>> Usually because you using it gives the company some other kind of
>> advantage. E.g., Acrobat Reader is utterly free. Anybody can easily
>> obtain it, install it, copy it around, put it on 20 PCs, no
>> restrictions, no limitations. Because that way, Adobe can go "Hey, buy
>> Acrobat Professional! Because EVERYBODY HAS ACROBAT READER..."
> 
> Except that Acrobat Reader isn't free either; it's used as a way to make 
> PDF more widely acceptable as a document format, which means they sell 
> more of their creation tools.  It's paid for by offsetting its costs with 
> an increase (maybe very slight incremental per product sold) for Adobe's 
> other products.
> 
> So in the end, they give the reader away for purely selfish reasons; it's 
> not altruism.

...in other words, "some software really is free, if making it free 
benefits the company somehow". Which was my original statement.

Nobody would pay money for an editor for a proprietry document format if 
the viewer for that format wasn't so utterly ubiquitous. Hence, making 
Acrobat Reader free benefits Adobe. And that's why it's free.

You would *think* making MathReader free would benefit Wolfram, but 
apparently not...

> "Free" is a marketing term when it comes to commercial ventures.  Like 
> "buy 2, get one free" isn't really one for free, it's three for the price 
> of two, and the business has decided that the margins on two are large 
> enough to cover the cost of the third and still make a profit.

I always thought 2 for 1 meant "buy one, pay for two, buy two, pay for 
two"...

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