Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!bionet!ames!lll-winken!uunet!odi!cass!benson
From: benson@odi.com (Benson I. Margulies)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: service for gnu software (was: Re: C++ 2.0 pricing and licensing policy)
Message-ID: <393@odi.ODI.COM>
Date: 14 Jul 89 16:52:09 GMT
References: <1481@ns.network.com> <8723@thorin.cs.unc.edu> <6590188@hplsla.HP.COM> <4294@tekcrl.LABS.TEK.COM>
Sender: news@odi.com
Reply-To: benson@odi.com (Benson I. Margulies)
Organization: Object Design Inc., Burlington, MA
Lines: 39

This message is part if a chain departing rapidly from the charter of
this newsgroup. I can't claim the right to the last word, but I can
warn people uninterested in FSF politics to type "n" before reading
further.

This idea about consultants has been part of the FSF manifesto from
day one.  Selling a program is evil. Charging an arbitrary cost to
make a program work (at all or in a particular environment) is fine.
Just like blackmail: you pay again and again, but you never get the
real negatives.  If an FSF product was ever complete and relatively
bug-free, the consultants would see their income drop considerably.
This produces some curious incentives.

For people who aren't building products atop FSF code, it makes the
FSF indistinguishable from any other vendor. "Oh, you want a G++ that
WORKS?  Just sign a blank check for one of our approved consultants,
and we'll fix it up in a jiffy." There is no guarantee that these
fixes will ever be seen by the rest of the users of the particular
item. It the employer of the consultant dosen't distribute their
fixed-up copy of the FSF product, they have no obligation to make the
fixes available. Consultants have an economic disincentive to see the
fixes distributed. The less they spread around, the more times they
can sell the same work. 

So the end user spends the money one way or the other. The notion that
only some small subset of the industry "need their hands held" is
laughable in general and insulting to many.  I imagine that most c++
customers (if not most readers of this list) would be delighted to be
able to buy a stable, bug-free binary, so they could get on with their
real work.

One of the useful (IMO) contributions of Marxist thinkers to the world
is to analyze any supposedly policical situation in terms of
economics. Who Benefits? In the situation at hand, consultants can
make money but others can't. And, of course, FSF approved consultants
have an edge over everyone else. Perhaps the first "r" should be
removed from the name of the FSF.

Benson I. Margulies