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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!spuxll!ech
From: ech@spuxll.UUCP (Ned Horvath)
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Re: New ideas on software piracy... Flames welcome. (long)
Message-ID: <701@spuxll.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 1-Aug-85 01:11:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: spuxll.701
Posted: Thu Aug  1 01:11:43 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 2-Aug-85 06:38:11 EDT
References: <419@gumby.UUCP>, <226@sesame.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Information Systems, South Plainfield NJ
Lines: 35

No flame, just a few exercises in reductio ad absurdum.

One: OK, henceforth all software is free.  However, society will have to
provide the physical necessities to those who create it, or they will starve.
The logical conclusion is to abandon the capitalism you claim to support in
favor of a socialism that will supply those needs.  Indeed, the excellent
freeware and good ideas you cite were in each case either developed at
tax-supported universities or third-partied to AT&T's rate payers, and
the second source dried up to a trickle when the Bell System broke up.

Two: You'd like a PD C compiler?  I don't understand.  You know what a C
compiler does; you can read about how it does it in your books; and you
wouldn't want one unless you could use one, so you must know how to program.
So when will you have it ready, and where do I send by SASE?

Three: This is the empirical argument, from the market economy you claim to
support.  There are an arbitrarily large number of potential programs out
there in idea-space waiting to be coded.  For my welfare check (see argument
one) I can code any of them.  But someone who HAS money to spend may knock
on my door and offer me an order of magnitude MORE money to code the one SHE
wants.  Shucks, I can write UltraRogue on the Riviera after I write her
application...oh, she WANTS me to write UltraRogue...!

The conclusion of all these arguments is the same: freeware is written
only by the beneficiaries of a tax on the general population.  That statement
is not intended to in any way demean those who work for Universities, or who
accept money collected from the general public.  It has long been recognized
that basic research, like clean air and national defense, is not well-
supported by a pure market economy.

I see no evidence that software is such a commodity.  I will happily pay for
the software that I need, especially in preference to paying taxes to the
Ministry of Software to develop things I can get for "free."

=Ned=