If a charity gives something away for free, then as a side effect, it can
bankrupt local businesses.
A good example of this is food aid. Consider the
case of a small farmer near water (a port) in a drought stricken country. The
small farmer can grow food, because he has water. He just cannot grow enough
food to save the country.
Seeing the drought, a charity sends in a boat load
of free food to save the starving. This saves the country. However, for the
farmer with water and crops, this is a disaster - he will go bust. No one will
purchase his crops if they can get the food aid for free.
The better
charities purchase some of the food aid locally, to avoid putting the local
farmers out of business and causing this problem. If enough local farmers go
out of business, then crop failure occurs two years in a row. The first year
because of the drought, and in the second year because of the local farmers went
out of business.
In the case of Google vs. Microsoft, the competition is fair
as long as everyone is playing on the same free software playing field. In this
case, Google allows other companies to reuse its software and to compete against
Google. For instance, Google lets other companies develop their own versions of
Android, and to keep all the profits they make. Microsoft, on the other hand,
would have a fit if you developed a custom spin of Windows, and started giving
it away for free.
Microsoft has done a great many things to create vendor
lock-in. Google - not so much. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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