FAQ: Economics Issues

Q: What are the costs involved in developing a LINMO-compatible web site?

A: The biggest cost of developing a LINMO-compatible web site is the tremendous amount of time required. This is time that could otherwise be spent working at a job in order to help pay the rent, feed the family, etc. There can also be substantial costs for web site hosting and hardware.

Q: Is it possible to make any financial profit from such a project?

A: The basic purpose is not to make money, but rather to produce a truly useful and enduring work. For some people this is at least as important a goal as making money. It is quite likely that many such sites will produce a financial loss, particularly when the time and effort of the developer(s) is taken into consideration. But it is important to keep in mind that many of the greatest works of art, science, music, literature and engineering were not undertaken to make a profit, but rather for the desire to create and to benefit mankind. Think of how much poorer civilization would be had only the most profitable projects been undertaken.

Q: What are the benefits from creating a LINMO-compatible web site?

A: The benefits from such sites can be immense. The main benefit for the world as a whole is the availability of a unique, high quality, comprehensive and highly accessible source of information about a topic. There is a great abundance (some say a surplus) of well-written hard copy (i.e., printed on paper) books about almost every conceivable topic, at least in the high income, industrialized countries, but there are relatively few web sites with comparable content and which also exploit the advantages of the web for providing information. These advantages include making high quality content accessible to that very large part of the world in which people have little or no access to high quality libraries, bookstores or university educational opportunities.

Q: Is there a network effect that results as a LINMO-compatible web site expands?

A: The term network effect is used by economists to refer to the situation in which the benefit to each user of a product (i.e., a good or service) increases as more people purchase or use the product. An example is e-mail, because the more people who use it, the more people that each person can contact or be contacted by with it. The effect is somewhat analogous for a LINMO-compatible web site in that the more pages that exist, the more useful each individual page becomes. This is because individual pages will tend to have more hyperlinks (i.e., to other pages on the site which provide more detailed definitions and explanations of terms of concepts) as the number of pages increase.

Q: What are the benefits to the author of such a site?

A: The benefits to the author are similar to those derived from creating a widely read hard copy book. Perhaps most important is the great satisfaction of creating a quality work that will be used by many thousands of people around the world every day and which will remain useful for years, decades or longer. Another benefit is that such a site can be very educational -- even if the author is already an expert on the subject, there is always more to learn. A third type of benefit is that the process of creating the articles could lead to some new ideas, such as new hypotheses, experiments, etc., that the author, or someone else, could explore further. An additional type of benefit is that such a successful project of this type could result in a considerable demand for the author for consulting, giving speeches, etc.

Moreover, there is yet another type of benefit. It is the excitement of being a pioneer in a still new medium, one whose numerous and substantial advantages have yet hardly begun to be exploited.

Q: Could the costs and benefits be analogous to those of creating free software?

A: Yes. This is a good analogy. Free software is computer software that is free both in a monetary sense and with regard to use. Both free software and LINMO-compatible web sites required a great deal of time and effort for development, and usually there will be no immediate, direct financial compensation. However, both types of projects can have great benefits for the world as a whole, and both may eventually lead to benefits for their developers as well (in addition to just the sheer joy of creation).

Q: Would LINMO be considered a disruptive technology?

A: The term disruptive technology is sometimes used to refer to a technology that has a negative effect on some other technology or industry. The Internet is thus a disruptive technology in that it has upset many traditional ways of doing things. But it is also an enabling technology in that it has helped many existing technologies and industries more efficient and has spawned a number of new ones. LINMO should be looked at as just being a refinement of some aspects of the web rather than being a new technology. However, it might be somewhat disruptive in that conforming web sites could affect the sales of some types of hard copy books. Moreover, such sites might eventually become partial substitutes for lectures in academic institutions.

Q: Is it possible to have advertising on the site to help cover the costs of development?

A: Advertising in its conventional sense, such as banner ads, pop-up ads and ads in the margins of pages, is not compatible with the goals of this model. There are already countless sites on the web each containing a great deal of advertising (and sometimes little else); there is no strong demand from users for still more of them.

Q: Why is advertising not appropriate?

A: There are a number of reasons. The most fundamental one is that a LINMO-compatible web site is designed to provide high quality and comprehensive information about a specific topic and make it as useful and convenient to as many people as possible. There are many people who are not opposed to advertising in general, but feel that it has its proper place. Advertisements in inappropriate places can be distracting and annoying; that is it can detract from the usability of sites. This can be seen, for example, by the fact that the margins of hard copy books are not crammed with ads. Likewise, ads are not shouted out over loudspeakers in the midst of a symphony, an opera or a religious service, nor are they inserted into the edges of paintings in an art museum.

Another reason that conventional advertisements are not LINMO-compatible is that they add to the size and complexity of web pages. One of the features of LINMO-compatible web pages is their extremely small byte size as compared with conventional web pages. This small size offers several important advantages, including minimizing downloading time in locations where Internet connections are slow or erratic (which is common in many lower income countries) and minimizing the costs of hosting large and heavily-visited sites.

Q: Is there any alternative to conventional advertising?

A: Yes. In place of conventional advertising, LINMO advocates contributions by individuals and organizations to help cover the costs of development and operation. It also encourages sponsorship by organizations. Sponsorship allows the organization's name to appear on the home page with a link to an on-site page about the sponsor. This page should be a factual page written by the site author in the same factual style as the rest of the site rather than being an advertisement (an approach could actually benefit both users and the sponsor). Sponsorship of a high quality and popular site could provide tremendous worldwide exposure for a business or other organization and also create much goodwill for it.

Q: What is the optimal source of funding for such sites?

A: Web sites fall into the category of what economists refer to as public goods. A public good is a product or a service that anyone may consume as much of as desired without reducing the amount available for consumption by others. The major problem with public goods is usually that the private sector cannot supply them, or cannot supply them in sufficient quantity, because it is difficult to charge for their use. Thus, many economists advocate the use of voluntary grants from the private sector and/or some sort of government support, such as subsidies, to encourage their production and maintenance.

Q: Is assistance available from the developer(s) of LINMO for new projects that want to conform to this model?

A: Yes, some limited assistance might be available.

Q: What kinds of assistance?

A: Initially it is being confined mainly to reviewing web sites to see whether they conform to the guidelines and making suggestions for their improvement. A future goal is to establish a foundation to actively promote the development of such sites.