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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Arial" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:#000000;">Dear Joshua,</font></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Arial" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:#000000;">I am rarely posting to this list because I am not a primarily technical person, but a social scientist, but your questions provokes me.</font></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Arial" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:#000000;">My answer would rather be: One cannot simply calculate the value of OSH work. In our German circle named Oekonux (Economy of Free Software) we had a legendary presentation done by Stefan Meretz in 2000 - "Linux/GNU is value free and thats a good thing". I do not know if a translation exists</font></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Arial" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:#000000;"><a href="http://www.kritische-informatik.de/index.htm?lxwertl.htm" target="_blank">http://www.kritische-informatik.de/index.htm?lxwertl.htm</a></font></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Arial" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:#000000;">The point is that value is the form a product takes that is made for exchange. It must be an exclusive product that is only available for an equivalent, representing the equal amount of value. To offer something of value, you have to possess it. Which finally means the best thing is to produce it. Production therefore is the substance of value, measured in time. If there is a need for the product, the nature of the need is not relevant - just that the need represents an equivalent, a quantity of value that can be exchanged.</font></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Arial" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:#000000;">Free Software or Hardware designs are not made for exchange, so they simply have no economic value.</font></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Arial" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:#000000;">Nobody can determine economic value, its a myth of economists. All the time people produce too little or too much, so value exists only as a tendency of approximating the average, which is the very reason why this ecomnomy is so dynamic and so prone to crisis.</font></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Arial" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:#000000;">If you would calculate a fee for your OpenSCAD file, the question of value wourld make sense. then you would be in competition with others trying to collect money.</font></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Arial" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:#000000;">But Free Hardware, as Free Software, is embedded in a totally different logic. Instead of competing, we are cooperating. And in cooperation, the non-exchange meaning of value rises and rises. In a way, every contribution becomes priceless ;-) - because it is part of the repository and available for many future uses.</font></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Arial" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:#000000;">And in dealing with a monetary and cost world, we might have to argue for the contributions that we make, asking for a share. </font></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Arial" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:#000000;">Michel Bauwens and the P2P Foundation came up with the idea of a P2P license. They say: businesses appropriate the work of communities and developers of common goods for free. The more communistic our license (->GPL), the more capitalistic their appropriation. Therefore we must ask for a fee from thoise who do not contribute to the common good.</font></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Arial" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:#000000;">I think there must be a better solution. We should not compromise the bridge to the commercial world for a cheap deal. But society has to acknowledge there is value in what we do. Even if in strict economic terms there is not. So finding the best solution for this problem will be a decisive social hack.</font></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Arial" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:#000000;">all the best</font></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Arial" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:#000000;">Franz Nahrada</font></div>
<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Arial" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:#000000;">Global Villages Network</font></div>
<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Arial" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:#000000;">Vienna, Austria</font></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Arial" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;color:#000000;"><b>The Open Source Hardware Association Discussion List <<a href="mailto:discuss@lists.oshwa.org">discuss@lists.oshwa.org</a>> schreibt:</b></font></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">I know that many of you has been thinking about how to determine the value of OSH work. Are you aware of any methods to calculate absolute value in real economic terms?</font></span></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">For example if you spend an hour of your time making an OpenSCAD file for a parametric test tube rack and put it in the public domain - and then for the rest of time anyone can download the file, customize the rack for their needs and print it for the cost of materials and a tiny amount of electricity. How much is that gift worth? </font></span></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">Clearly it is more than your opportunity cost or wage for one hour...but how much more is the value to humanity?</font></span></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">Is it:</font></span></div>
<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">(cost to purchase - cost to print) x (number of people downloading it)?</font></span></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">or </font></span></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">(hourly wage of person needing a test tube rack) x (number of people using it)?</font></span></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">or</font></span></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">total value of the test tube market - (cost to print)x (number of racks in the market) ....summed for N years?</font></span></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">or </font></span></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">As the cost of test tube racks has now decreased it is the total value of the current market + a bonus for expanding future use because of lower costs + some kind of educational bonus because more schools can afford them + some fraction of future discoveries made possible because now part of the expense of doing science was decreased.....</font></span></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">or</font></span></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">Is there a better way to do this - and get to quantification?</font></span></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">Thanks!</font></span></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">Joshua</font></span></div>
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