🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <23305@cbmvax.commodore.com> jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com (Randell Jesup) writes:
>	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.  It just puts a floor under the market.

FSF is competing in the free market on price.  They have chosen their
price: zero.

>	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!).  Instead, they charge money for artificial legal devices called
licenses.  Imagine if, when I bought a book, I had to sign a piece of
paper requiring me to assure that no one can read over my shoulder.
Or not to show the book to anyone else.  Or to only read the book in
a specified room.  Or all the other strange stuff that software licenses
commonly require.  The license would also say that I don't own the book
at all, but only a license to use it in the ways specified in the contract.

Software licenses are creations of the legal system and have nothing
to do with a free market.

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Joe Buck
jbuck@galileo.berkeley.edu	 {uunet,ucbvax}!galileo.berkeley.edu!jbuck