Monthly Archives: February 2005

What music is really worth?

Boing Boing: Napster-to-Go reviewed, math done

Another aspect of the Napster to Go model is that it shows that the RIAAs claims of a lost sale for every download to be demonstrably false. If you can download an unlimited number of songs via napster and play them for as long as you continue to subscribe, then the maximum loss the RIAA suffers from a single downloader cannot exceed $15/month no matter how many songs a person downloads.

So, generously assuming a music listening lifespan of $80 years, the maximum lifetime value of a customer is 80 years * 12 months/ year * $15/month = $14,400

Bad Nelson?

Update: Sveasoft’s gone further than I thought in trying to work around the GPL. It’m not sure it was the case when I first commented on Nelson’s post, but these days I can’t disagree with his assessment.

Nelson’s Weblog: tech / good / hyperWRT

This is rich.

Nelson slams Sveasoft, who makes an improvement to the GPLed firmware for linksys routers as “assholes, trying to sell the GPL code for money.”

Nevermind the relevant details, namely that:
1. The GPL doesn’t prevent people from selling deriviatives of GPLed software, provided they provide the derived source code to their customers.

2. Sveasoft provides the derived source code to their customers.

3. Sveasoft’s particular approach to getting paid for selling GPLed software was actually reviewed and found complaint by the FSFs compliance manager.