🚀 go-pugleaf

barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin) writes:
> In article <23053@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> chased@rbbb.Eng.Sun.COM (David Chase) w
> >						       It is, in fact,
> >more cost-effective for me to buy the next release of MacWrite or
> >Think-C than it is for me to enhance it or fix it myself, and I'm
> >actually someone with years of experience programming and fixing bugs
> >in other people's code.  
> 
> When you say that it's more cost-effective, are you including the value of
> time?  New releases of most applications come out on the order of every six
> months to a year.  If you encounter a problem with the version of MacWrite
> that was just released yesterday, you'll probably have to live with it for
> a year before you can buy the next release.  And then you still have to
> hope that they fixed the bug.

You're confusing availability of source code with freedom of redistribution.

Look at MINIX.  It's commercial copyrighted code.  Yet if I find a bug in
the OS or one of the applications, I can fix it myself from the sources.
I pick up patches on the net from people who have found bugs.  And if I
want, I can distribute patches for my fixes to whoever I want.

So what are the enormous problems with MINIX's system of distribution which
the GPL will solve?  1. That I can't give away a copy of MINIX to all my
friends at no personal cost, and 2. that I can't sell my own product based
on MINIX code.  Well, as a user neither of those are problems for me.

> >			  For someone who is just a user and not a
> >programmer, I cannot see how this would ever make sense.
> 
> If you'd be willing to wait for the next version and spend a few hundred
> dollars to buy it, why wouldn't you be willing to spend that money hiring
> someone to fix the bugs for you right away?

I didn't pay anything to upgrade my MINIX to the next official version.  The
patches were free.  Another non-problem, I think.

> If there were more software that anyone could support there would probably
> be more people providing the support, and market forces would drive the
> prices down to affordable levels.

Yup. I think $180 for a UNIX-like OS, with sources, which runs on four or
five different hardware platforms is quite a bargain, and I appreciate
the good job which market forces have done bringing it down to that level.

Of course, not all commercial software is distributed in as 'nice' a way
as MINIX.  So perhaps we should be looking at distributing commercial
software 'nicely' rather than throwing away the whole idea of commercial
distribution.


mathew

-- 
Another would-be Mac owner put off by Apple's monopolistic practices.