Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1a 12/4/83; site rlgvax.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!harpo!seismo!rlgvax!plunkett
From: plunkett@rlgvax.UUCP (Scott Plunkett)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Cost vs. Value of Software
Message-ID: <1829@rlgvax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 26-Mar-84 12:23:55 EST
Article-I.D.: rlgvax.1829
Posted: Mon Mar 26 12:23:55 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 27-Mar-84 03:14:14 EST
Organization: CCI Office Systems Group, Reston, VA
Lines: 46

[if missing, your software cost too much]

The gentleman from the U of Texas Astronomy Dept. complains that
software is overpriced:

"Once the original software author is paid for his work -- at reasonable wages,
let's assume -- then his program is worth just about the reproduction and
distribution costs, and no more than that."

He later on allows a "sensible profit", strictly less than "25%", beyond
these basic costs, after the program is "amortized".  Most kind. (Advice:
stick to star gazing, please.)

He also likens humble programmers (who have the audacity to charge, say,
more than $100 for a compiler) to Arabian oil men.  I suspect he is warning
us that the resentment and anger felt for the OPEC people is in principle
the same resentment and anger building up against programmers who
dare affront the market-place with programs that "cost more than
$100".  (Rejoinder:  If you pay more than $100 for a program that is
not worth it, that's your problem; programs are priced according to value
rendered to the user, not "cost".)

There are all sorts of forces that determine the going price of a given
program, but the cost of the distribution is hardly the governing one.
To make it so would of course destroy the incentive to produce programs
in the first place.

But I detect in his note an implication that the major component in
pricing programs is: greed.  The software industry he says, "*insists*
on raking in the profits" (asterisks mine).  One has in mind a
programmer spending his 4-hour work day madly duplicating floppy disks
and selling them for prices that (gasp!) are 10 or 20 or more times the
cost of the disk and its jacket, the programmers salary (reasonable, of
course), his bus-fare to work, and lunch (prorated).

I recommend the astronomer from Texas calm down before he does
himself a mischief:  No, there is no Software Industry Cartel, No we are
not all colluding on prices, and just as some expensive software will
be reduced in price because of market pressures, so some inexpensive
software will disappear as being insupportable and irresponsive to
the users need: you really have no complaint at all, except with your
own purchasing decisions.

Free lunches, ain't.
-- 
..{allegra,seismo}!rlgvax!plunkett