On Fri, 16 Apr 2010 09:01:03 +0100, Invisible wrote:

>> 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.

If there's no immediate cost to the end user, that's "free" to you, but 
it's not free.  There's a value proposition that has to be offset.

Because developers need to eat as well. ;-)

> 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...

It depends on the business analysis.  Wolfram might well have concluded 
that not enough people need the reader to make it worthwhile, or that the 
number of people paying for the creation software wouldn't offset the 
development costs.

>> "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"...

Not really, "2 for 1" means "we normally charge x, but we've decided to 
get you to like the product by either taking a loss or by cutting our 
margin down by 50% or more so you can try the product out".

ie, "2 for the (normal) price of 1".

Jim

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