🚀 go-pugleaf

In <591o6a$1oeg$1@news-s01.ny.us.ibm.net>, wardell@ibm.net writes:
>Reply-To: wardell@ibm.net
>
>Actually, what OS/2 gaming needs is some responsibility.  Blaming IBM or
>hoping IBM will do something is not the answer.
>
[snipped ...

>But OS/2 users who flock to these petition pages and demand some ISV to
>make an OS/2 version of their software SHOULD be prepared to purchase
>that software.  
>
>Stardock would be pleased if Trials of Battle sold a mere10,000 copies 
>per year which
>is very small by DOS/Windows standards (and small compared to GalCiv 2
[snipped ...

>But what ends up happening is that many people just want the software on
>OS/2 even though they have no intention on actually purchasing it.  Worse
>yet, when games come out and don't do well, a host of OS/2 users will
>come up with some trivial reason on why they didn't do well. "Simcity 2000
>failed because it didn't work on a particular S3 chipset." thread is an
>example.  SC2000 didn't sell merely 20,000 copies or something, it apparently
>sold LESS than 1000 copies.
>
>Games cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce, manufacture, support,
>and market.  The typical wholesale price of any software is about 50% of 
>its list price so if you do the math, game companies have to sell quite
>a large number of units.  This risk seems diminished if you have 20,000
>users emailing you that they want you to make a game.  
>
>But then the game comes out and those 20,000 users who emailed you are
>gone....off to the next ISV to ask them to port their game.
[snipped ...

>So the real issue is, how many of those OS/2 users who petition for new
>OS/2 software are also willing to spend a few dollars on it as well?
[snipped ...

>Brad

  The postings in cooa over the last few days have been
absolutely compelling/engrossing/rivetting reading!  They are an
inspiration.  Congratulations to the posters!  Chis Robarto must
take two pieces of cake by scooping those stinking negative
thinking jounos!  Ronald Stephens' <rdsteph@ibm.net> 50 simple ideas to 
help OS/2 will contribute to improving the stocks of OS/2.

  Brad Wardell's point about OS/2 enthusiasts keenest to sign
petitions for companies like his to write games and then failing
to actually buy them is a serious problem.  I didn't think the
replies to that point were adequate.  Here are my thought (this is
a long posting again - it's a big issue and I don't know how to
make it shorter ;-| ).

  The problem is part of the issue of whether software should all
be free.  The GNU project expresses the philosophy that software
should be free (I have a range of thoughts here that will have to
wait another discussion).

  This is a multifacetted issue so I'll write some things you're
famililiar with and expect me to say but I'll also be writing
about aspects that no one currently seems to be covering.  So I'm
asking you to follow me over some unfamiliar terrain.

  One difficulty with anything free is that we all would like
free lunches but unfortunately there are none - someone has to pay
at the end of the line.  Life is hard for everyone and we all look
to "load shedding".  Hats off to the people who have contributed
to free software.  They have made contributions to the computing
community at some cost to themselves.  In the meantime they have
had to live.  What has been the source of that benefit?  Are they
people of independent means?  Then the "opportunity" value of the
wealth has flowed thru to us rather than being spent elsewhere.
Are they employed in a publicly funded university or research
institution?  Then the source is the tax payers' dollars.

  Entrepreneurs like Brad try to make a living out of writing
software.  They can't pass costs elsewhere.  If we want their
software there is no alternative to bearing the costs ourselves
(assuming we accept the current economic order).  ?? Does this
suggest sedition, revolution?  Well yes it does in some ways, but
I have no notion of violence (or invasions of privacy) at all.

  I need to bring in Maslow's concept of our hierarchy of needs.
As you probably know this is conceptualised as a pyramid -
something like:
                   ************
                  /   Culture   \
                 /   art  music  \
                /  things of the  \
               / mind and spirit   \
              /  computer programs? \
             /-----------------------\
            / Love, affection, social \
           /   stability,supportive,   \
          /     community relations     \
         / ------------------------------\
        / Food, clothing, shelter, health \
       / and safety, mobility - generally  \
      /  physical "infrastructure" aspects. \
      ---------------------------------------

  A point that immediately comes out is that the higher does not
stand without the lower.  So Stardock Enterprises cannot exist
without good community relations, without adequate physical
infrastructure.  The trouble is that both in Australia, the US and
virtually all western countries the lower parts of that pyramid is
weakening.  For example, both our countries have a serious foreign
debt problem.  Living standards of the current generation in their
prime is lower than that of their parents for the first time in
rememberable history.

  This means that there is less room for a place in the sun at
the apex (in the current economic disorder).  Microsoft has been
pushing many out, partly by their aggressive growth and partly by 
life getting generally leaner and meaner.  So if we continue along 
the conventional capitalist road organisations like Stardock may 
get pushed out.  It wouldn't matter what they tried to do.

  The radical question I want to float is whether there is a
means to split the top zone from the lower ones?  Not absolutely,
for my discussion above shows that that is impossible, but from
the organisational structure's point of view.

  You see: OS/2, programming for it, its technological excellence
has a cultural element about it.  It is good for our spirits like
a good piece of art, literature, music or poetry is - it grabs us
emotionally.  So ideally we would like to to pursue it without the
distraction/impediment of having to earn our living to meet lower
needs while doing it!  However, the trouble with a (conventional -
there are yet other incredible thoughts circulating in my head
which will have to wait for another occasion) capitalist firm is
that it intentionally holds them together!  Does it have to be
like that?

  Despite our high foreign debt we are still living amongst
incredible wealth.  So one way to achieve the split, **without
theft** from the rich, is to somehow cycle the mobile parts of
that wealth to support lower order needs of programmers and high
tech firms.  How would we do that?  A range of answers are
emerging.  One contemporary one I like is A **Wealth Beyond
Measure** (an atlas of new economics) by Paul Ekins et al Gaia 
Books 1992 ISBN 1 8567 5050 7.  Another older book is JK Gal-
braith's **Money** Whence it came, where it went Penguin Books
1975 reprinted 1979 (no ISBN not invented then?)  From another
stream of more action orientated thought I get the following idea.

  Split the earning of income to meet lower order needs off from
the production and distribution of software!  Make software either
free or at very low costs.  Generate income by meeting basics
needs like supplying food, clothing and shelter.  Franchises like
McDonalds do just this extremely well.  What if you had a money
machine like that supplying all the funds you needed to write the
best software?  You wouldn't actually work at supplying food say
because then you wouldn't have time to program!  You'd have to
achieve some "leverage" so that somehow thousands - millions of
people contribute their little bit aggregating into funds for high
level activity in our or Brad's control - not someone else's.
Conventionally, leverage is achieved by big capital.  Big capital
creates jobs.  These jobs cream off part of the value of what
someone produces to pay dividends - Marx called this the
extraction of surplus value.  What if you haven't got any capital
or not enough of it?  Are you therefore completely stymied?

  Unconventionally a way to achieve leverage, dare I say it, is
network marketing <g> or more concretely network buying and
selling (I deal with ideas and need not only freedom of speech,
but probably even more vitally, freedom from inhibition to pursue
ideas from any source whether it be from "ratbag?" network
marketers, communists, catholics, muslims, Bosnians or Serbs...)
Here in OZ there is a successful network marketer couple who are
immunologist scientists.  He and his wife use to work in a
goverment funded organisation.  Sick of unstable funding they went
into network marketing, succeeded and now fund their own research
out of leveraged funding arising from dealing in basic low level
needs.

  If they can do it why can't we?  The vision is free software
AND having our food, clothing, shelter etc.

  Do you get aggravated with network marketing promo because it
raises your hopes and then drops you into the hardwork shit of
having to actually build the network?  (I'm ignoring scams because
network marketing doesn't have a monopoly on scams).  Do you
therefore need to get emotionally tougher?  I/you've got to build
the network for those dollars to stream.  There are a variety of
schemes out there.  I don't go along with one's that send junk
Email - that's no way to win friends and influence people.  You
build networks by connecting personally with people.  With network
marketing schemes around you can put big dollar electric currents
into those personal relations and solve financial/economic
problems for you and everyone else in the network.

  What a concept network marketing is!  Have a good look at them.
Develop a nose for the scam ones - and there are many.  Run with
one or more good ones!  Perhaps negotiate a joint venture with an
existing company.  Maybe cook up a new one especially for OS/2!
If you're interested in the ones I work with, EMail.  They have
rules that stops me from discussing them in public.  They work by
personal referral.  You can't discuss them in public because this
would undermine the principle of personal referral and create
inequity within the network.

Regards,

Victor Bien
Involved in activities to do with the public interest
Business interests:
VCB Computing (R) 
network marketing