Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!cwjcc!ncoast!allbery
From: allbery@NCoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: What does free mean.
Message-ID: <1990Mar20.005906.21181@NCoast.ORG>
Date: 20 Mar 90 00:59:06 GMT
References: <1151@mtxinu.UUCP> <1990Mar14.234322.16167@NCoast.ORG> <6110@becker.UUCP>
Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery)
Followup-To: comp.sources.d
Distribution: usa
Organization: North Coast Public Access UN*X, Cleveland, OH
Lines: 55

As quoted from <6110@becker.UUCP> by bdb@becker.UUCP (Bruce Becker):
+---------------
| In article <1990Mar14.234322.16167@NCoast.ORG> allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery) writes:
| |My main problem with the FSF philosophy, is that it devalues my time.  If I am
| |not able to get money to put food on the table---or even have a table to put
| |food on---I must do something for which I can earn money.  The FSF proposes,
| |however, that my main saleable commodity must not be sold, and intends that
| |that philosophy become *the* philosophy.  I conclude that I'd better go get a
| |job as a bricklayer.  Of course, if that leaves me unable to write software
| |because e.g. too tired or not enough time in the day, etc., too bad.
| 
| 	There is nothing which prevents you from
| 	selling software which contains FSF-licenced
| 	code.
| 
| 	What you are prohibited from doing is
| 	to conceal the source code from the customer.
+---------------

Which, of course, means that people can then get the source code themselves
and suddenly nobody's buying from me because they can get it for free.  This,
of course, is somehow not supposed to be a problem.

+---------------
| |Not to mention the fact that I can find quite a few more things to do with my
| |time than recreational programming.  If I'm even remotely like other program-
| |mers, there's liable to be a sharp drop in the number of new programs.
| 
| 	There are quite a few more things to do with
| 	your time than recreational poking at software
| 	idealists.
+---------------

See above.

+---------------
| 	Give it a rest, Brandon - you're shooting
| 	from the hip on this one and not hitting
| 	anything...
+---------------

Because there's nothing to hit but emptiness where there should be some
intelligence.  Again, see above; and explain how this is supposed to magically
not happen, eh?

The upshot is that I can charge all I want, but I'd better be fully
compensated on the first purchase because a second isn't all that likely.  And
nobody will buy at the resulting price, so I may as well stay home.  I repeat:
my time has been (effectively) devalued by the FSF.

++Brandon
-- 
Brandon S. Allbery (human), allbery@NCoast.ORG (Inet), BALLBERY (MCI Mail)
ALLBERY (Delphi), uunet!cwjcc.cwru.edu!ncoast!allbery (UUCP), B.ALLBERY (GEnie)
BrandonA (A-Online) ("...and a partridge in a pear tree!" ;-)