Why Are Ultrasound Machines So Expensive?
I like free software as much as the next guy, but saying, "If there were free software for this project, the cost would come down." ignores that developing that software is expensive and someone needs to pay for it.<p>From an economic perspective (and this article is about economics), companies release software when they hope that the cost of the freeloaders is outweighed by the number of benefit additional contributors will provide. (Or that broad adoption of the software has some other benefit to the opening company.)<p>Generally, the more broadly useful the software is, the more economic sense it makes to open the source.<p>I see no evidence that there would be any economic benefit for any company opening the source of their very specialized, very expensive software here.<p>So yeah, if it were free, it would cost less. OK then.