Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!decwrl!decwrl!granite.pa.dec.com!mwm From: mwm@raven.pa.dec.com (Mike (Real Amigas have keyboard garages) Meyer) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: An issue for the entire Amiga Community. Message-ID: Date: 4 Jun 90 18:55:53 GMT References: <20930@snow-white.udel.EDU> <1990Jun3.163532.12083@ameristar> Sender: news@decwrl.dec.com Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica Lines: 56 In-reply-to: rick@ameristar's message of 3 Jun 90 16:35:32 GMT In article <1990Jun3.163532.12083@ameristar> rick@ameristar (Rick Spanbauer) writes: In summary: the "right" thing is to distribute significant works and all clone works commercially. Right for you, right for the user community, right for the machine itself. And hell, it is considerate of other people too. Ok, I'll quit releasing stuff PD, and start releasing it commerciallty. I'll even split the profits 60/40 with you. All you have to do is cover all the expenses of going commercial, and the difference between my 60% and my current salary. Oh - and my wife's salary, as she'll be doing documentation for me instead of MIPS. That'll save you money over just hiring someone to do the documentation. Or are you not interested? I don't blame you. I don't think it's worth going through that expense & risk for 100%; why should you for 40%. On the other hand, you also don't have any business dictating what's "right" for me to do with the product of my labor. Remember, much of the PD work floating around is _not_ the result of someone deciding they wanted to make money. It's the result of someone saying "I need an X", and discovering that the X's available were either inadequate or overpriced. So they write an X that's adequate for their needs. The choice now is to 1) go commercial, which means there's something greater than four times as much work left to do, as well as the problems of actually shipping it; 2) ship it out as freeware in some form, which is what you're objecting to; 3) not ever let anyone else see it - which is a perversion of hacker nature. I'll confess I would have been happier if the concept of shareware had never come into being - I think a lot of nifty software that would otherwise be free and come with source gets turned into sourceless shareware because the author hopes to make a fast buck. But that's got nothing to do with said shareware hurting commercial ventures; in fact, there's little overlap between the two types of shareware. I would like to add that there are days when I pretty much buy the Stallman theory of free software. Maybe it is true that computing would benefit from having everything available for the asking. The question is what you software types will do for a living to support all those midnight PD production cycles? Work at McDonalds? Ain't my idea of living! I'd do the same thing I'm doing now - charge people $'s for hours of time spent supporting software. I don't own the software I support now, and can't make money selling it. Why should it being GNUWare make a significant difference?