Value

The concept of Value is too often equated with or limited to Profit, yet production has many different results including:

• Object or Product or Output occurs by mixing Sources with Labor. For instance, apples are the result of mixing land, SUN, water, apple tree, tools and some work. Software is the result of mixing work - probably through a keyboard onto a computer that requires land and electricity.

• • In some cases the Objects of production are automatically owned by the owner of the Sources of that production - such as in the apples or software discussed above. This is the primary Value that a developer of Free Software receives since he probably did that work to achieve his own Objectives.

• • In other cases the Object may be owned by a worker who rented some of the durable Sources (such as an oven and the kitchen it sits in), while purchasing (owning) only the consumable inputs such as the apples, flour, butter and energy (gas or electricity) to make an apple pie.

• Wages may be paid by the owners of Physical Sources or Consumers of Information who hire workers to transform some inputs into outputs as defined by those owners. This is another way a Free Software developer could earn value, but the agreement to pay must be made before the work is completed (or at least before the Object code is delivered), else the Consumer has no incentive to pay.

• Profit is actually not Value at all, but is the difference between consumer price and owner costs - where wages are one of those costs. Profit is not needed by society, it is simply an inverse measure of consumer development and can be balanced (to solidify an economy) by treating it as an investment for that same consumer into Physical Sources needed for future production as outlined in the GNU General Public Law.