Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: comp.org.usenix
Subject: Re: USENIX Board Studies UUCP
Message-ID: <51385@looking.on.ca>
Date: 22 Nov 89 19:08:05 GMT
References: <287@usenix.UUCP> <1624@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> <1989Nov16.182104.23746@utzoo.uucp> <49017@looking.on.ca> <1416@cs.rit.edu>
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 24
Class: discussion

I wasn't saying that it wasn't sometimes easier for free software to become
widespread.

A whole bunch of people were saying it was effectively impossible for
a new communications standard to develop if people had to pay for it.

I brought up Group III fax as a counter-example.  It *is* possible.  In
fact it happens all the time.

In fact, it happens more often than with free software.  All the
"make software free so it can be widely distributed" advocates constantly
ignore the fact that the most widely distributed programs in the world
are all commercial products.   Counter-intuitive as it might be to you,
making something proprietary, *in the right way* usually increases
distribution, rather than reducing it.

Define a communications standard and get some commercial vendors to
implement and *support* it.  Let anybody implement it, including freeware
writers.  But if you want it to become widely used, there had better be
somebody out there promoting, advertising, distributing and supporting it.

This is a bit of a tangent to the issue, of course.
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473