Well, information should be free (and frequently is). Actually, that's a misnomer - information is only as free as your time is free to discover it, just like free software is only as free as your time is free to set it up and learn how to use it. Free information is generally inconvenient to discover and collate; you pay for it in toil.
Free software is free to me but I've paid to put it together and maintain it, I've developed it in the past (I'm too busy for active dev right now) and I also pay by passing on the information that I gained on to other users. If someone doesn't do that, they're freeloaders, pure and simple.
There's nothing good about being a freeloader. Unfortunately, too many people confuse the lack of an up-front cost with the freedom to freeload.
> many are naive about the costs involved in putting issues of a magazine
> online. The librarians were especially naive. They were asking for cheap
> access to the online issues, thinking that it was all just a matter of
> automatically converting files to HTML. Librarians have also pioneered
That's very interesting. If anything, librarians should be most knowledgeable about the problems afflicting the publishing industry. Perhaps there's some academic tunnel vision going on.
As some background, my major current project here (at nurun, which is a subsidiary of Quebecor) is developing an automated publishing system, and it has a budget of several million dollars - which will probably swell. That said, it'll probably make its cost back inside a year or two, but still. This kind of thing requires a lot of money up front, and most magazines are anything but cash-rich.
Science, to go online, wouldn't need this kind of system (although if they wanted to automate the entire production, they could probably use it). But a print-to-web interface would certainly cost some big bucks.
Cheers,
Marco
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> Marco Anglesio | I fancied you'd return the way you said, <
> mpa at the-wire.com | But I grow old and I forget your name. <
> http://www.the-wire.com/~mpa | (I think I made you up inside my head.) <
> | --Sylvia Plath <
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