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From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Feedback on Computer Crime
Message-ID: <9008270815.AA10363@world.std.com>
Date: 27 Aug 90 08:15:12 GMT
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Re: Why we write software...

Many of the things I've contributed were written for some specific
reason, I needed the software at the time. When it was done it seemed
like it would be useful to others so I distributed it. The point being
that the writing of the software and the act of giving it away were
quite disconnected, it was an afterthought (gee, that's actually
useful, maybe I should post it...)

Of course, there were other things I've written more or less with the
idea that, if it worked, it should be given away. That was more in the
category of, well, "because it wasn't there" software. Xman was
definitely that kind of thing.

Some was in between, perhaps I wrote it because I thought people on
the campus I worked for needed it and when I saw they found it useful
(or failed to appreciate its brilliance :-) I gave it away.

But I wouldn't discount the afterthought software, I think a lot of
people write something simply because *they* wanted it. When they see
the result, perhaps after sharing it with some friends and getting
compliments on how useful it is, they realized that distributing it
would be a good thing. Distributing, on the nets at least, is a very
easy thing to do, no big decision involved.

Being as the act of writing it may have been 100% selfish, but the
quite separate act of giving it away 98% selfless (mainly because the
software is just sitting there at that point) it's hard to make
generalizations as are being made here. We're talking about different
acts.

        -Barry Shein

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