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It’s a lovely product and you can tell a lot of work went into making this course. But I fail to understand the author’s logic behind “a good course has to be free”. Why though? What’s wrong with creating value (like The OP) and then extracting it from the people that benefit from it?

In fact, there’s tons of anecdotal evidence that free MOOCS haven’t faired well in terms of retention precisely because of a lack of a buy-in from the people taking those courses.



See this, from one of the authors of one of the best undergraduate textbooks on operating systems:

The Case for Free Online Books (FOBs): Experiences with "Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces" by Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau, http://from-a-to-remzi.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-case-for-fre...


Imagine people in low paying jobs who dont have the means to pay - there should be stellar free resources like this for them to grasp things with a solid enough foundation to get onto more complex projects.

Free is great.


Is it possible that value can be generated without a financial transaction?




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