🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <kp7af0INNso4@early-bird.think.com> barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin) writes:
>I wrote
>>I disagree, for the moment, on the value of getting functionality
>>extended and or customization added.  In some markets, the goal
>>appears to be consistent, uniform behavior.

>Your examples indicate that you *do* value customization.  You start with a
>heterogeneous collection of systems, and you want them to appear
>consistent.  Since the different vendors didn't make them consistent, you
>might consider paying a consultant to customize some of them so they all
>appear to be the same.

>Any time you take a system that doesn't do quite what you want, and change
>it so that it does, that's a customization.

This is true for some of my examples, but not for my others.  In two
cases, the problem arises from slightly differently configured
Macintoshes; in the case of my grandfather, it seems ludicrous to buy
the wrong software, and then pay to have it made to look like the
software that he should have bought.  My brother's room-of-computers
problem also concerns the same piece of software, subtly reconfigured
from computer to computer.  (Yes, you could use a consultant to hack
the applications so that they could not be reconfigured.)  In the case
of my use of emacs, you are correct.

I'm not saying that free software and consulting for same will never
work (it does appear to work for Cygnus), but I am saying that it
looks like the economics that result will hinder its penetration into
the world of individuals (as opposed to corporations) who buy
software.  That's ok, and you can make money doing consulting for
large corporations, but I don't get much of a thrill out of making
life easier for General Motors or Xerox or Intel.

David Chase
Sun