🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <kihkdiINNdc2@early-bird.think.com> barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin) writes:
>I believe Microsoft began its life as a couple of guys writing a BASIC
>interpreter in their garage.  Computer spreadsheets were invented by

Microsoft began by selling Basic and then writing it - in that order.

>Frankston and Bricklan on an Apple II in one of their apartments; they
>later formed Software Arts to market Visicalc, and were eventually bought
>out by Lotus (which I'll bet also began life as a personal endeavor).  I
>imagine that many other popular microcomputer applications were invented
>and initially marketed on such shoestring budgets.

I'm sure many industries started that way.  I'm not going to argue that
software costs as much as hardware.  But it *does* cost money to produce,
and in some markets it can cost a *lot* of money to produce.  (Go ask
Visix how much financing *they* got!)

>starting big and paying off the loans with much of the income.  You don't
>need a large support group until you have a large customer base, so it's
>silly to hire support people early on (what would happen if the product

True.  We haven't, instead it costs us in development time, and that's
a very real cost.

>nothing, and very little revenues).  Marketing can also be done
>inexpensively; a one-person operation doesn't need to take out full-page
>ads in every publication.

Perhaps.  But even without ads it costs money.

But by now I've lost track. What's the point of this? Software shouldn't
be copyrighted because it's cheap to produce?  That doesn't sound right.
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I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept
responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate
everyone else's.