🚀 go-pugleaf

>>>>> On 7 Dec 89 11:10:33 GMT, vcc@delta.eecs.nwu.edu (Guest from Vogelback) said:

cjc> In article <32054@news.Think.COM> barmar@Think.COM writes:
>In article <8041@stiatl.UUCP> meo@stiatl.UUCP (Miles O'Neal) writes:
>>Why should software be free? Why not hardware? Cars? Telephone calls?
>>TV? Money? Or anything and everyhting else? Why shouldn't all food be
>>a labor of love? Are farmers mass murderers for not giving away their
>>crops because someone out there is hungry?
>
>A difference between software and literature, however, is that software
>authors have other means to get income.  When an author finishes writing a
>book, he's done everything there is to do, and he deserves some income for
>it.  However, a software producer is also a service provider; he can charge
>for customer support.  Going back to my above argument, it makes sense to
>charge for customer service, because the service provider has a limited
>amount of manpower available.

cjc> Yes, but doesn't this kind of thinking encourage those who write software, 
cjc> under this condition, not to write good code?  I, for one, when I write
cjc> code, attempt to write it such that I never need to maintain it.  Needless
cjc> to say, I've never been successful on the first try :), but it would seem
cjc> that if I wanted to charge for software support and revisions, I'd want not
cjc> to write good code so my clients would need to keep me around.  This seems
cjc> contrary to all that RMS and FSF are attempting to encourage:  if their
cjc> version of emacs were *really* buggy then we'd all have a reason to keep
cjc> them in business, right?

No, because there would be other people like myself who would write
code that works and would quickly put you and your bug ridden greedy
code out of business.

--
Rodney