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From: EGNILGES@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Ed Nilges)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng,comp.object
Subject: Re: How to pay for reusable software
Message-ID: <12663@pucc.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 5 Apr 91 19:51:28 GMT
References: <1991Apr3.231849.13410@m.cs.uiuc.edu> <1991Apr5.040312.29351@pdn.paradyne.com>
Reply-To: EGNILGES@pucc.Princeton.EDU
Organization: Princeton University, NJ
Lines: 28
Disclaimer: Author bears full responsibility for contents of this article

In article <1991Apr5.040312.29351@pdn.paradyne.com>, locke@paradyne.com (Richard Locke) writes:

>In article <1991Apr3.231849.13410@m.cs.uiuc.edu> johnson@cs.uiuc.EDU (Ralph Johnson) writes:
>
>Ralph asks some good questions:
>
><...how can we afford to pay the costs of developing reusable software?

A government or government-sponsored effort is one possibility.  The
U. S. Government printing office has long made a variety of information
on various scientific topics cheaply available.  It could start selling
book/diskette combinations of reusable tools for various areas.

This would prevent horrors such as runaway patenting of obvious
algorithms (including blinking cursors.)  It would also make it
possible for small startups to concentrate development efforts on
the end-user problem they were chartered to solve without having to
buy collections of software typically priced past 200.00 per
single-use package.  Too many programmers in small businesses of
all types are faced with a cruel choice: "wasting time" by developing
documented reusable components or creating huge, unmaintainable
agglomerations of single-purpose code.

Private companies are loth to fund reusability since reusability
entails clear documentation of procedures that are in many cases
trade secrets.  This costs these companies money in the form of
too many programmers and it results in a poor product for the end
user.