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From: weide@elephant.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bruce Weide)
Newsgroups: comp.object,comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: How to pay for reusable software
Message-ID: <105958@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 10 Apr 91 19:00:29 GMT
References: <1991Apr3.231849.13410@m.cs.uiuc.edu> <RSW.91Apr4182149@tahiti.cs.brown.EDU> <6761@stpstn.UUCP>
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In article <6761@stpstn.UUCP> cox@stpstn.UUCP (Brad Cox) writes:
>
>But Ralph has his finger on the key obstacle to doing this...finding a
>way to keep the roots of this tree from starving.
>

Just to reiterate one of Ralph's important points that Brad goes on to
observe later in the above article...  The economic question is A key
obstacle to practical software reuse, but there are also serious
technical impediments to designing good reusable components.  People
who haven't tried it (seriously) often don't realize that.  Even if we
figure out how to solve the economic, psychological, sociological,
managerial, ..., problems that impede reuse, we STILL have to solve
the technical ones, too (e.g., how to design high-quality reusable
components).

So the economic question is not THEY key issue, IMHO.  It is just one
of many.  In fact, if we solve all the other problems without having
good reusable components, we may be worse off than we are now.  People
will then be able to reuse inappropriate, incorrect, inefficient
software components more easily than they can now!

	-Bruce