🚀 go-pugleaf

Let me explain why.   Simply put, there aren't enough competent
hackers in the world right now to keep up with existing work.   In the
group that I work in, I have more work to do than I have person-hours to
complete it.   Orders of magnitude more work.

If I were running free software, some of that work would go away, but
it would simply be replaced by the opportunity to do useful work,
instead of constantly re-inventing the wheel.

Yes, there are people who are employed endlessly rewriting software
for which implementations already exist.   Lots of people.   Some of
them are competent hackers, too.   But the bottom line is that there
is enough real work to be done on computers that it's almost a crime
to have a hacker working on stuff that some other hacker has already
perfected.

When I think about the software that I could use (or that the users I
support could use) if it were available, my mind boggles.  When I
think of the connective tissue that needs to be built to make all
these applications that I have work in harmony, the mind boggles yet
again.  It's bloody depressing, because I just don't have *time* to do
any of those projects.

Hell, even when I was working on an IBM mainframe (A job I hated beyond
words), I could see so many development opportunities that it was hard
to concentrate on the drudgework of working on the system that I
needed to finish.   Sigh.

Whether or not some bimbo (or bimbette; I don't want to be sexist
here) in a suit gets rich off of my hard work isn't relevant to me.
What matters to me is that somebody, somewhere (and preferably, lots
of people everywhere) sit down with software that I've created and say
to themselves ``Aah, this is nice!  This makes my life better!''.  And
also, that I be compensated.  I've never had a problem with the
latter.  I don't get enough of the former these days.

			       _MelloN_