🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <sZYpBNy00Ugy49zXtL@andrew.cmu.edu> jb3o+@andrew.cmu.edu (Jon Allen Boone) writes:
|This seems highly unlikely.  Not to cast dispersions on your
|programming abilities, but even most *commercial* software needs
|support - and very *few* have good documentation.  So it is unlikely
|that you will not be able to make some money at consultation.  Second,

Not to cast aspersions upon your dispersion-casting (8^), but some
commercial software is done *right*. The problems are often ego(s)
and/or artificial deadlines. Both CAN be dealt with, regardless of
how often they are dealt with. While the perversity of the universe
(and society, and software quality) tends to a maximum, there are
always counterexamples. The trick is to be one.

|there is nothing that *forces* people to pay you now.  It only takes
|on person to buy the software so that it can be pirated - most people
|i talk to in day-to-day conversation do not pirate software because
|they feel that the programmers deserve compensation.

Strange. An incredible number of the people I know have no problem
illegally copying software, including many software developers who
get hot at the idea someone might copy their work...

|> 2) A lot of other people, such as 103% of all the MIS-heads in the world,
|> are going to lump it in with all that "public domain bulletin board stuff"-
|>...
|That is a problem indeed.  The solution is not to stop contributing to
|the public domain, but to change the type and quality of software
|available in the public domain, thereby giving PD a better reputation.

Same scenario, different perceptions. MIS-heads, as a class, are not
likely to change their attitudes about this during my softwaring
lifespan, regardless of the reality of the PD software situation.

|I am aware of what it takes to run a company.  My dad has done that
|same thing (trucking, not software) for the last 15+ years.  However,
|it does not take a company to write good software.  So, while a

For large software projects, it takes a company (or one GOOD person a
honking LONG time of uncompensated time).

|company may well need to charge ridiculous prices to support its
|expenditures and what it wants to do in the future, it seems that
|perhaps they should offer fewer benefits to their employees and use
|cheaper methods of doing what they are doing now....(using pd

Right, we'll just forget the vacations & paid sick leave, let the
government do the health care (thereby at least doubling the costs
overnight via bureaucracy - which costs us all more!), and maybe
give annual lowers instead of raises?

|software, perhaps?)...and then they wouldn't have to charge so much.
|After all, like Frank Zappa, you guys are just in it for the money,
|right?

Hey, bucko, we SAID that. Maybe YOU got a wealthy uncle paying your
bills, or wanna live in a socialist state, but a lot of us are happy
right here in the here and now, and for lots of us, that's sans a
Sugar Daddy, and in the USA, which isn't socialist yet...

|...  However, as long as the answer to ridiculous
|prices for software is "it's life - deal with it", then the only

I never said that. In fact, as I have stated before, I share the
FSF's revulsion towards the current state of affairs, softwarewise.

|reasonable answer i can give to critics of the GPL is "that's life -
|deal with it" or "put up or shut up!" or something equally as flippant
|(check my .sig :-)  

Gee, the 1st IS pretty flippant 8^), and as for the 2nd, I'm working
on it!

|I haven't worked for a software development company yet this century.
|Howver, i know that some companies such as Sierra On-Line used to
|treat their programmers to extragavent parties and incredible benefits
|that were "barely coverd by the cost of their software".  Do i feel

If this is where your ideas of standard benefits comes from, then
no wonder uou have such a warped view of things! At least as far as
what makes a company, what benefits are like, etc... trust me; this
type of thing is very out of the ordinary, at least anywhere in the
southeastern US! And I know of nobody on the west coast working
anywhere like that.

|sympathetic when people pirate their software?  Doubtful.  Maybe if
|they had spent a little more of their personal funds and a lot less of
|their company funds for these things, then i would sympathise more.

So, what's the diff? If they had spent personal funds, which they got
via pay from SOL, guess what? They'd get it back somehow. Secondly,
a LOT of the people involved there took eNORmous personal risks to
work for SOL (financially, carerer-wise, etc). They expected a high
payback. Thirdly, regardless of their chosen lifestyle, piracy is
immoral. And please don't bother to compare SOL pirates and, say,
Robin Hood. SOL was selling *games*, and not robbing poor people of
their very ability to live, so it's not even a close comparison...

Which does not imply either way what I think of Robin Hood!

-Miles O'Neal
{yr fave backbone here}!emory!stiatl!meo