🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Jan18.070335.26058@alphalpha.com> nazgul@alphalpha.com (Kee Hinckley) writes:

   >1: Go to a PC software store and count the number of dismal editors,
   >compilers, and debuggers.  While there are a few shining lights, the
   >others still manage to make a living, precisely because of the
   >software copyright system.  They are lousy and incompetent
   >programmers, and our society continues to support them.  That is a
   >pretty large social cost.

   After your cogent explanation of the differences between the different
   copyright models you now have totally confused me.  In what way does
   the current commercial software system allow people to get away
   with selling bad software?  And in what way would the GNU system
   change it?  Are you implying that people buy the bad stuff because
   they can't afford the good stuff?  And does that therefore mean
   that under the GNU model there would only ever be one version of
   any given type of product?  I think not.

What I mean is this.  If software is not excellent, then its producers
won't get any money.  Nobody will shell out donations; nobody will pay
money hoping to get more software in the future.  Only excellent
software will get money.  With a market, instead, you get money
proportional to your excellence.  In the current state of affairs,
that gives a lot af dismal programmers a lot of money.

   >editors, compilers, etc.  Large numbers of people get tricked (I can't
   >think of any other word that applies) into supporting these people,
   How are they tricked?

   Actually, on a slightly different tack.  Cygnus has recently posted
   a commercial advertisement (although noone seems to have complained :-)
   to a number of groups.  Sun is unbundling their compilers.  Cygnus
   has offered to make gcc commercial quality on Sparc for $200K, or
   $2000/customer for 100 customers.  This is exactly the model that
   the FSF claims is the future of software.  Now I actually would
   not be suprised if they raised the money, but I would expect a
   significant portion to come donations, most likely from hardware
   vendors like Sun or the Sparc-clone manufacturors.  If they can
   in fact persuade 100 customers to dish out $2000 each for something
   that everyone else will get for free I will be _very_ impressed.
   It's a great ideal, but it's not human nature.

I don't care whether it's hardware people or not who pay the money.
That is a growing source of income for free software.  If that makes
it work, then why insist that "customers" pay the money?  They do
anyway, just indirectly.

	-mib