Re: Way OT: Adam Smith and Software Markets

["Marin David Condic" <mcondic.auntie.spam@acm.org>]

Wellll....... Its still a free market, just a very unusual one in which
there are many sellers but only one buyer. (There is actually a word for
that - I heard it once on an NPR show - but I can't remember what it was.
The inverse of a "Monopoly")

(BTW: It is important to note that a "Monopoly" is not a violation of a free
market unless it is a State ordered monopoly. So long as someone is free to
enter the market and compete against a monopoly, its still a market.)

It would have been a "command economy" thing had the government done
something like passing a law saying that "Here is this government produced
compiler and anyone wishing to write software in the U.S.A. must use this
compiler or be fined $10000 and jailed for 90 days...." Sort of like the
"Universal Health Care" thing proposed a while back in a time I wish to
forget. :-) The Ada situation was simply a single customer expressing to its
suppliers what it is they wanted to purchase. The suppliers were free to not
make that product and not do business with that customer. As it turns out,
the suppliers actually acted more coercively against their customer -
forcing the *customer* to accept an alternate product.

MDC
--
======================================================================
Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jsf.mil/

Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g

    "Going cold turkey isn't as delicious as it sounds."
        -- H. Simpson
======================================================================

Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com> wrote in message
news:S8Caa.7690$gi1.4716@nwrdny02.gnilink.net...
>
> On the contrary. Ada first appeared in a non-free market, coercively
> forced upon programmers by the U.S. Department of Defense. Had it been
> marketed to those programmers, it might have stood a better chance of
> success.
>