🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <23053@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> chased@rbbb.Eng.Sun.COM (David Chase) writes:
>In article <D87-MAL.91Nov8172504@bella.nada.kth.se>
>d87-mal@bella.nada.kth.se (Mats L|fkvist) writes: 
>>The GPL restricts what a programmer can do with the code but ensures
>>that the users of the code don't loose their freedom (to have it changed,
>>fixed, ported etc).
>
>This is actually the best thing I've heard anyone say about the GPL
>lately, but I think it depends on an incorrect assumption --
>namely, that there are many "program users" who have the interest/
>ability/money to have code changed/fixed/ported etc.  

Why do there have to be "many" such users?  Just because the users who have
such needs are in the minority, why should they be denied the ability?

>						       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.

>			  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?

If your car develops problems, wouldn't you take it to a mechanic rather
than buy a new car?

>In practice, the users for whom free software appears to make the most
>sense are computer science graduate students (I was one once), and
>people tinkering with compilers (for the special case of GCC) who
>don't want to write their own from scratch.  Even if I had the spare
>time on my hands, I'd rather spend it doing fun things than hacking on
>some sludgy old piece of code.

I'm neither of the above class of people, but I find source availability
virtually a must for my job.  I maintain a network of workstations for a
company with a large software R&D staff.  These people are quite demanding,
and aren't always willing to wait a year or so for a new release before
getting problems fixed.  In the case of applications for which we have
source, I can provide the fixes much faster than the vendors' software
support organizations.  And I can implement enhancements that the vendor
has no interest in making at all (I can understand that the vendor has
limited resources, and has to concentrate them on the features that would
benefit the most customers, and sometimes that means that our wishes get
lower priority).

>On the other hand, mass market software consumers don't pony up
>25-250K$ for software support.

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.
-- 
Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
{uunet,harvard}!think!barmar