🚀 go-pugleaf

kap1@icarus.spc.uchicago.edu (Dietrich Kappe) writes:
> Without voicing an opinion on the correctness of your
> view, the example you are basing your argument on is very much out of
> context. I would say that the decline of all productivity, whether 
> intellectual or physical, is a malaise common to authoritarian 
> communist states. Even if you make money with a software product,
> what can you spend it on?

Goods.  Black market goods.  If you make foreign currency, you can spend
it in foreign currency shops.

> In that hotbed of capitalism, Hong Kong, where software is cloned
> as fast as its released, would you say that no one invests in software?

I don't know.  How many Hong Kong software packages have you seen recently?

> As I see it, there are two ways to arrive at a good peice of software:
[...]
> 2) Cheapsoft comes out with a shody piece of software. Cheapersoft
> makes a miniscule improvement on that software and sells it for
> $5 less. This keeps on going until we have 100's of really good
> packages out there competing with one another.

The trouble is that software grown via this sort of method tends to be a
mess. The best software I've seen is that designed and built by a 
small number of people with a single clear vision of what it should be
like.


mathew

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