🚀 go-pugleaf

miron@cs.sfu.ca (Miron Cuperman) said:
> baud@kepler (Kurt Baudendistel) writes:
>>3. Do you think that one guy who bought the software package is such a
>>   schmuck that s/he will just give it away to all comers? No, s/he won't,
>>   but something equivalent will probably happen to deprive the original
>>   seller of profit in this scenario.

> Well, I suppose I'm a shmuck.  I will go for the greatest profit for
> myself.  If that includes copying software which is under the GPL
> instead of paying the original author then that is what I will do.  The
> word schmuck is probably wrong here.  Try rationally selfish.

No, you're not a schmuck, nor would I even call you selfish (rationally
or otherwise).  You are simply following the terms under which the
author distributed his or her software.  When I post software under the
GPL, I assume I will never make money from it.  The GPL allows me or
anybody else to charge a price for particular methods of distributing
my software; for example, the FSF distributes its software free over
FTP, but also charges a fee for distributing by tape.  There is at least
one company that is selling a GPL-protected program of mine on disks for
personal computers for a modest fee.  These are valuable services because
not everybody has access to FTP and Usenet.  Yes, the first person who
buys a tape for the FSF could duplicate it and "rob" the FSF of the
income from other potential tape customers, but as far as I know this
hasn't happened.  The tapes are there for people who are not very
well-connected; these people would be no more likely to find schmuck #1
than they would be to find the FSF.  Besides, people who buy FSF tapes
consider themselves to be making a donation, which is very different
from making a purchase.  You pay $100 for a GNU tape for the same reason
that you might pay outrageous prices for Girl Scout cookies.

The GPL explicitly encourages people to distribute software as much
as possible.  You don't need to apologize for giving GPL-protected
software to your friends, even if the software is also available for
a fee.

>>4. How about all the little PC guys improving the software! I know that
>>   they can do a better job of it than the big company! This is clearly
>>   demonstrated by all the PD software out there that works great!

> Show me a PD high end desk top publishing system.  Or an expert
> system.  Or a CAD system.  Or something like Mathematica.  You cannot
> do it PD or under the GPL because you would go bankrupt.

Well...  TeX is in many ways a higher-end publishing system than a lot
of the commercial software out there.  Berkeley distributes a widely-used
CAD system which, I believe, is free.  I have also distributed CAD software
free.  My Emacs Calculator does many of the things Mathematica does,
albeit not as quickly or comprehensively.  Last I heard there was another
FSF-affiliated mathematical system, Jacal, under development.

On the other hand, PC and Macintosh publishing systems are easier to use
than TeX.  Commercial CAD systems probably employ better algorithms than
free CAD systems.  Mathematica has had, I've heard, 100 man-years invested
in it, which my little Emacs Calc can't hope to match.  It's all a matter
of scope.  The commercial software world allows projects to reach higher
heights, but this often is not necessary to get the job done.  I could
not put 100 man-years into Calc without spending 100 years on it; since
I derive no income from it, I can't afford to hire employees to help me.
That means Calc is not and will not be as complete as Mathematica, nor
will it be able to tackle problems as large as those that Mathematica can
handle, nor will it offer as many special-purpose functions.  Oh, well,
that's too bad.  If you want those things, you can buy Mathematica.  If
you don't want to buy Mathematica, you can use Calc.  That's why they call
it the free software *alternative*.

But don't say that because Mathematica took 100 man-years to build, nothing
that can replace it for most day-to-day tasks also takes that much effort.
It doesn't, and that's where free software fits in.  By starting Mathematica,
Stephen Wolfram has basically decided to devote a large part of his life
to that project, for the foreseeable future.  He has lots of employees to
feed.  I don't want to devote my life to Calc, or to take on all those
responsibilities on its behalf.  Fortunately, the FSF and the GPL give me
a way to see that many people can benefit from the time I do spend working
on Calc, with minimal hassle to me in the long run.

The only thing left in your list is expert systems, and I think that's
because expert systems tend to be too specialized for it to make sense
to release them free.  Also, they are inherently expensive to create
because you have to hire scads of experts to create their databases.  (If
one guy sits in his room and spends a few months writing an expert system,
that system will contain one guy's expertise, which probably isn't enough
to make the system useful to other people.)  So expert systems provide a
good example of what I was thinking of when I wrote my earlier posting
about specialized software.

								-- Dave