🚀 go-pugleaf

jbuck@forney.berkeley.edu (Joe Buck) writes:
> In article <23305@cbmvax.commodore.com> jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com (Randell J
> >	Correct.  Reasonably good, free software can actually discourage
> >development of better or different software to serve related markets. 
> 
> No, it doesn't.  It just means that people can't sell junk anymore.
> If you want to sell someone a program, it will have to be better than
> what they can get for free.

No, it has to be *very much* better than what they can get for free.  People
will put up with software that isn't much good for what they want purely on
the grounds that it's free and the alternatives aren't.

Look at the number of people who put up with MS-DOS because they get it free
with their computer.  Look at the effort Microsoft has had to put in to
persuade people to upgrade to DOS 5.  There are still people muddling along
with DOS 3.3 even though DOS 5 is a lot better, simply because DOS 3.3 didn't
cost them anything whereas DOS 5 will.

> >	A free and healthy competitive software market is by far the best
> >situation to have, for both programmers and for users.
> 
> Certainly it would be, if we had one.  As it is, almost no one sells
> software (do you think you own the software you run?  Read the license
> again!).

So let's get rid of software licenses.  I'm all for that.  Shrink-wrap
software licenses are almost certainly invalid in the UK anyway; I really *do*
buy software :-)


mathew