[lug] Perhaps part of the psychology of Free

[Chris Riddoch]

On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 7:56 PM, Chip Atkinson <chip at pupman.com> wrote:
> The other thing that seemed rather glaring is that there was no discussion
>  between the ratio of prices.  Looking at our english measurement system
>  indicates that we are ratio oriented (halves, quarters, etc.).  When you
>  shave 1 cent off the price of two different houses, the ratio is unchanged
>  and the buying decision too is unchanged.  When you shave 1 cent off the
>  price of the two candies, you end up with a ratio of 14/0 which is
>  significantly different than 15:1.

Except there's plenty of empirical evidence showing that people *do*
treat a difference of one cent as significant, regardless of the
percent difference that cent makes to the total.  Consider the
difference between $10 and $9.99.  When's the last time you've seen a
grocery store *not* end a price in a 9?  I find myself ignoring the
cents, and rounding up to the next dollar, when I'm especially lazy.
(I've been surprised when I thought something was $3 and it turned out
to be $2.19)

This all is just barely touching on the research done in cognitive
science on decision-making.  Just about everything on the subject will
cite something by Kahneman[1] and Tversky[2], or something based on
their research.  You can find a lot of interesting topics in the
"Notable contributions" sections of their wikipedia pages.

And now back to the topic of Linux - when we use the word "free" as in
"free software," it almost necessarily requires a conversational
footnote about the fact that we're referring to more than just money.
I do rather like the word "libre" to describe the concept - I once
thought "liberated software" would be a more appropriate term, because
of that, but I'm not positive it would cause any less confusion.

So, what effect does the word "free" have on people in the context of
software?  *That's* the question we'd like studied...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kahneman
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Tversky

-- 
epistemological humility
 Chris Riddoch