Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!brunix!rca From: rca@cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: Selling Usenet news Message-ID: <60083@brunix.UUCP> Date: 20 Dec 90 19:52:04 GMT References: <08ld02QC04Da01@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com> <661640384.12535@zeus.uop.edu> <1990Dec20.054557.25331@ecst.csuchico.edu> Sender: news@brunix.UUCP Reply-To: rca@cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony) Distribution: na Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science Lines: 45 In article <1990Dec20.054557.25331@ecst.csuchico.edu> tempest@ecst.csuchico.edu (Kenneth K.F. Lui) writes: >In article <661640384.12535@zeus.uop.edu> luther@uop.EDU (Pat Luther) writes: >>So how is this not selling software? If I buy WordPerfect, I pay for the >>media it's on, and WP's time and effort in writing it. If you have to >>give them money for it, they're selling it. >> >You're also paying for WP's R&D, the largest portion of the >retail price. I do agree that Lighthouse is selling the >software. Ok, could we stop this discussion? It get old.... By the way, no one doubts they are selling something. The big question is what they are selling. If you sell a product you pay R&D, Marketing, Net Profit, Media, Copying, Documentation. Then you also sell for PROFIT. If you sell a service, you don't sell the software. e.g. FSF sells tapes with their software. Nevertheless they do not sell any software, they sell a copy service. (Ever thought your copy shop next door sells books just because they let you copy some?) Thus you pay for their time and media. If they would sell for profit (which I doubt) then you would also pay for marketing etc. I have never seen such marketing and thus I guess it does not exist. So yes they sell it, no, they don't do it for a profit that would be worth bothering (if any). You can also show this as a 2 by 2 matrix: profit vs. non-profit on one axis, service selling vs. software selling on the other. I think it is a non-profit service and thus a great thing, and if it spreads their name and help sell their other i.e. real products then so be it. In case you have read up to here and still not realized that this whole passage makes fun of the whole discussion then here are the smilies: :-) :-) :-Q Ufff. That's it. Ronald ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." G.B. Shaw | rca@cs.brown.edu or antony@browncog.bitnet