Sunday, March 09, 2008
The Economics of Free Beer
by Ken Houghton
In several cases, commercial analogues are also available, and there are firms that and developers who make their income/living providing support for systems such as Compiere or O/Ses such as Linux.
But Economic Logic is pondering the Creative Commons licensing of Beer recipes.
If I wanted to create a market for a niche beer (say, one using Guaraná beans), what better way than to give the recipe away? Let others do the initial demand-creating distribution and then let Say's Law do the rest.
We wouldn't expect Budweiser or Miller to give their recipe away,* but there are few lower-cost ways of performing market research.
*"Carbonate water. Hold up some hops across the room, upwind, being careful not to let too many get into the atmosphere. Dye the results the appropriate color."
The posts on this blog are under a Creative Commons License, as are most of the usable software programs not designed for the Mac and an increasing number of operating systems.
In several cases, commercial analogues are also available, and there are firms that and developers who make their income/living providing support for systems such as Compiere or O/Ses such as Linux.
But Economic Logic is pondering the Creative Commons licensing of Beer recipes.
This means you are allowed to sell and make a profit from this recipe, and are even allowed to create derivative recipes.
This project started in Denmark. Why do they do it? The site is silent on this, but I have no doubt they just find it useful, so why not?
If I wanted to create a market for a niche beer (say, one using Guaraná beans), what better way than to give the recipe away? Let others do the initial demand-creating distribution and then let Say's Law do the rest.
We wouldn't expect Budweiser or Miller to give their recipe away,* but there are few lower-cost ways of performing market research.
*"Carbonate water. Hold up some hops across the room, upwind, being careful not to let too many get into the atmosphere. Dye the results the appropriate color."
Labels: Economics, Market Failures
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