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From: vcc@delta.eecs.nwu.edu (Guest from Vogelback)
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: Stallman's attitude
Summary: Yes, but...
Message-ID: <1912@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 7 Dec 89 11:10:33 GMT
References: <8041@stiatl.UUCP> <32054@news.Think.COM>
Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu
Organization: Northwestern U, Evanston IL, USA
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In article <32054@news.Think.COM> barmar@Think.COM writes:
>In article <8041@stiatl.UUCP> meo@stiatl.UUCP (Miles O'Neal) writes:
>>Why should software be free? Why not hardware? Cars? Telephone calls?
>>TV? Money? Or anything and everyhting else? Why shouldn't all food be
>>a labor of love? Are farmers mass murderers for not giving away their
>>crops because someone out there is hungry?
>
>A difference between software and literature, however, is that software
>authors have other means to get income.  When an author finishes writing a
>book, he's done everything there is to do, and he deserves some income for
>it.  However, a software producer is also a service provider; he can charge
>for customer support.  Going back to my above argument, it makes sense to
>charge for customer service, because the service provider has a limited
>amount of manpower available.

Yes, but doesn't this kind of thinking encourage those who write software, 
under this condition, not to write good code?  I, for one, when I write
code, attempt to write it such that I never need to maintain it.  Needless
to say, I've never been successful on the first try :), but it would seem
that if I wanted to charge for software support and revisions, I'd want not
to write good code so my clients would need to keep me around.  This seems
contrary to all that RMS and FSF are attempting to encourage:  if their
version of emacs were *really* buggy then we'd all have a reason to keep
them in business, right?

Just a random thought.

---
christopher j. chen
northwestern university
christopher@nuacc.acns.nwu.edu