Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ames!oliveb!sun!ouroborous!limes
From: limes%ouroborous@Sun.COM (Greg Limes)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: Posting shareware to the Usenet
Summary: why not let lots of people see it?
Message-ID: <38093@sun.uucp>
Date: 6 Jan 88 23:37:48 GMT
References: <2377@dasys1.UUCP>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Lines: 27

In article <2377@dasys1.UUCP>, samperi@dasys1.UUCP (Dominick Samperi) writes:
> Question: What motivates a programmer to develop a large complex software
> system, perhaps requiring many weeks (or even years) of development effort,
> which is then posted for the world to use, for free?

Dominick, if you have to ask you will never understand :-)

I, for one, get great joy out of producing a good piece of software and
having many other people use it. In a way, it is grabbing a small
handful of fame in a group of people you respect and who, after running
your program, probably respect you; plus, if someone sees a better way
of doing something, you may get the joy of watching your program grow
(or shrink), get better, faster, have features added, and so on. Or, a
subroutine may be particularly well done, and you may see it crop up in
other people's code -- always a nice surprise.

Shareware is a little trickier than Freeware in this case; people are
less likely to lift code, and are less likely to admit so when they
do.  On the other hand, it can mean pocket change; and, after all,
money is a universal symbol in our culture for appreciation of value
received.

Greg Limes
ARPA:	limes@sun.com		 UUCP:	..!ucbvax!sun!limes

Disclaimer:	I do not speak for Sun Microsystems, they hire
		other people to do that.