Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!gatech!mcnc!uvaarpa!virginia!toylnd!dca
From: dca@toylnd.UUCP (David C. Albrecht)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Software thieves (was Re: Software theives)
Message-ID: <290@toylnd.UUCP>
Date: 26 Aug 89 23:51:40 GMT
References: <30706@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <6846@rpi.edu> <10043@bsu-cs.bsu.edu> <6927@rpi.edu>
Distribution: usa
Organization: Dave & Anne, Charlottesville VA.
Lines: 137

In article <6927@rpi.edu>, kudla@pawl.rpi.edu (Robert J. Kudla) writes:
> In article <289@toylnd.UUCP> dca@toylnd.UUCP (David C. Albrecht) writes:
> 
> >I don't steal software because a world of those types would result in
> >no software and no new computers (new incompatible computers need new
> >software).  Most people have to eat.
> That's assuming that people would *want* to pirate the programs that
> had to be written. It's a bit tough to pirate an operating system
> (though if someone manages to do it, hey....) and would you really
> want your own personal copy of, say, TECO?
Facetious argument.  It's pretty easy to thieve OS's OS/9, Xenix/Unix,
MSDOS, are all just like any other software package.  No, I wouldn't want
a personal copy of TECO but at the time it was produced it was probably
no better or worse than most of the competition and I'm sure plenty of people
would have liked a personal copy (had they a personal computer that could of
run it).
> 
> Sorry, but other than entertainment software, 95% of the good software
> I've used has been freely redistributable to begin with. People who
> have motive other than profit are just naturally better-motivated.
> Let's get real here- anyone trying to develop for the Amiga and live
> off of it, unless they've got a *damn* good product, is going to go
> broke. There are too many games for mediocrity to survive, and too
> many F.R. programs that will do a better job than WordMasherIII.
> 

Uh huh.  Maybe true in your case but I doubt it's the norm.
In the freely redistributable market place I've seen little or no:

DTP (not wordprocessing).
Paint Programs
Music Generation programs (using internal voices)
Music Generation programs (using MIDI)
Sound Manipulation programs
Animation workbenches
Draw programs
Entertainment software (as you mentioned)
Software Development Tools
The best 3d tools

By my lights, you don't do very much with the Amiga.

I could probably come up with some more but it seems pointless.  Obviously it's
your opinion that people who have motives other than profit are better motivated
personally I think it's a patently ridiculous statement.  I think it's pretty
easy from observation of marketplaces and choices of occupations of highly
motivated people that profit is a POWERFUL motivater arguably only contending
with fame as THE most powerful.  It could be possible to make a case that
love of programming is a necessary ingredient for the best motivation but
that and the desire for profit are hardly exclusive.

I dare say that ANY person who is trying to sell programs into the Amiga
marketplace is trying to live off it.  It may not be their only program,
it may not be their only job, but certainly it is part of their income and
thus they are trying to live off it.

You are missing the salient point anyway.  If we assumed everyone was software
thieves from the infancy of the industry rather than picking an arbitrary point
in time as you are wont to do I would wager that the industry would be an
extremely pale shadow of its current self software, hardware, all of it.

Freeware tends to develop in a very sporadic fashion, it's typically slower
to come out than for profit software.  It only gets developed in those areas
where someone who has the spare time, the altruistic inclination, and possesses
enough income from other sources to purchase the machine to develop on.  It's
my gut feeling that freeware really only exists when there is a foundation of
purchasable software to build upon.

Software sales are a significant part of the sales of most computer dealers.
Without software sales (of significant price) there would be far fewer dealers.
Fewer dealers causes fewer machine sales, fewer machine sales means smaller
market penetration, smaller market penetration reduces the audience from
which to draw your altruistic software developers.

Very few people since the infancy of the industry have been enchanted enough
with a bare piece of metal to procure one, without large amounts of software
machines don't sell.  Even in the very early days, the best known OSes,
compilers, debuggers assemblers etc. all cost money.  If everyone had been
stealing instead of buying products back then I expect it would have set
back the development of new software immeasurably because authors couldn't
have been able to afford to spend the time assuming (and it's a mighty big
assumption) that they had the inclination to work for free.
It all adds up to fewer machine sales and far less software.  Less money going
into the industry would have meant less spent on R&D.  Under such circumstances
it's my belief we would be looking today at a top of the market machine as an
8086 if we were lucky.  I contend the software situation would probably be
pitiful.

> >contributory side than riding with the (you fill in the blank) who
> >think they are cool because they are abusing the productive masses and
> >getting away with it.
> 
> Who ever said anything about being cool? It sounds like the same old
> "if you act against the norm, you must think you're cool but you're
> really a weenie" mentality I've been getting for years.
> 
I have nothing against acting against the norm, it's abusing the norm that
I abhor.  Yeah, and your probably right I'm right in there with all those
people calling you a weenie, though truth to tell off the net I'd use much
less acceptable words.
>    I'm no saint and have my ethical lapses too.  That doesn't mean I'm
>    proud of them and try to preach them as right and proper.
> 
> One man's ethical lapse is another man's sainthood. Remember that.
> Maybe your ideal world would be made up of five billion other people
> like you, but mine sure wouldn't.

Uh huh.  I think that one man's ethical lapse is only another man's sainthood
among the mentally deranged or serverely deluded.  My ideal world certainly
wouldn't be five billion clones of me though I do think that a world of five
billion of at least my level of ethical integrity probably would be an
improvement.  It's hard to say, one so rarely hears about those with good
ethics where we hear about those on the dark side all the time.  Given the
limited knowledge of you from the ethics you profess in your postings I tend
to believe that a world of five billion people with your ethics would be
unbearable.

All these arguments about software thievery always revolve around the
communist manifesto.  Everyone should be treated the same, the workers
love of work and responsibility to the community will insure his
best performance, comrade.  All you have to do
is look around the world today to see how good a motivater getting
the same rewards for your herculean efforts as the guy next to you
who isn't doing dick works.  Communistic countries are scrambling to
extract themselves from the mistaken branch they took.  Of course the
software thieves try to hide this under the bushel basket of:
Yeah, well, capitalism is fine for most stuff, but I want software so
it should be free.  I contend that it doesn't work for a significant
size industry any better than it does for an entire country.  Software writers
are artists just like song writers or book writers that they deserve
compensation for their work is obvious to any but the most degraded.

No one is stopping anyone from distributing their software free or only
using free software.  But stealing from those who don't agree with your
code of the way it should be I find repugnant.

David Albrecht