Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!van-bc! From: lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca (Larry Phillips) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: An issue for the entire Amiga Community. Message-ID: <1695@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca> Date: 5 Jun 90 21:31:13 GMT Lines: 60 Return-Path: To: van-bc!rnews In <1990Jun5.231451.422@ameristar>, rick@ameristar (Rick Spanbauer) writes: >In article mwm@raven.pa.dec.com (Mike (Real Amigas have keyboard garages) Meyer) writes: >>In article <1990Jun3.163532.12083@ameristar> rick@ameristar (Rick Spanbauer) writes: > >>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 > ^^^^^^^^^^ > Ah, you said the "O" word. Defend "overpriced", please. Well, I didn't say it, but I'll defend it. The definition of it, first of all, is simple. Overpriced is when a product is perceived by the buyer to not give an adequate benefit in return for the money asked. Now this may sound a little general to you, but it's the reality of the situation, and the reality does not allow for a fixed point of 'overpricedness' for any given product, that being dependent upon each buyer's situation. If I were to need, say, an Ada compiler to do a job, for which I would be paid a sum of money, I would be willing to pay quite a bit, exactly how much being dependent on the amount I could expect to make on the job, plus whatever I felt I could make with the product after that job was through. On the other claw, if I did not have a contract that required a fully certified Ada compiler, and if I wanted to learn the language, I would certainly not be willing to pay the same amount. The difference, in this particular example, might be considerable, perhaps as much as $4000-$5000 difference. ie. I might pay 5 grand for it if I had a good contract, and only $100 or less if I just wanted to play with it to see what the language was like. If I wanted to play, and the commercial $100 Ada was not worth beans for some reason, I might then write one myself (Fat chance, but you get the idea). The result of that project could end up as PD, freeware, shareware, or commercial. Bear in mind that this presupposes that the two products mentioned were actually available. >>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. > > If you read my earlier comments closely, you'll see that > I confined my comments to HackerDudes reinventing commercially > available products, mostly out of motivation that the commercial > software "costs too much". Well, maybe it does... to them. Maybe, just maybe, they (1) don't have a lot of money, (2) don't feel the product is good enough for the cost, (3) cannot justify it as a business expense, (4) don't need the full capabilities of the product, and (5) would enjoy writing it so much that the writing would be more than worth the time spent. If you look upon 'hobby' time as time that is best spent doing what you want to do, and writing something is what you want to do, you would be foolish to pay someone for the dubious benefit of depriving yourself of many hours of pleasurable endeavour. -larry -- The raytracer of justice recurses slowly, but it renders exceedingly fine. +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | // Larry Phillips | | \X/ lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca -or- uunet!van-bc!lpami!lphillips | | COMPUSERVE: 76703,4322 -or- 76703.4322@compuserve.com | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+