Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!rochester!udel!burdvax!sdcrdcf!trwrb!desint!geoff
From: geoff@desint.UUCP (Geoff Kuenning)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: `free' software
Message-ID: <1661@desint.UUCP>
Date: 14 Jan 88 18:21:15 GMT
References: <14224@think.UUCP> <9983@mimsy.UUCP> <992@devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Reply-To: geoff@desint.UUCP (Geoff Kuenning)
Organization: Interrupt Technology Corp., Manhattan Beach, CA
Lines: 24

In article <992@devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> lwall@devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall) writes:

> How much money would you personally pay to upgrade from readnews to rn?

Given how much time it saves me, $50-$100 seems appropriate.

> How much money would you pay for the patch program?

At this point it's such a standard tool that it's absolutely necessary.
Try working on X-windows without patch, for example.  Again, I'd certainly
pay $50 for it.  People like Locus Computing, who have to have it, should
be willng to pay $250 (though I don't know if they are).

> It's not so much that people don't value the programs after they have them--they
> do value them.  But they're not the sort of thing that would ever catch on
> if they had to overcome the marketing barrier.

Despite what I said above, this is true.  I doubt I'd pay for rn if I didn't
already have it.  (Patch, though, is another story.)

(Sorry, Larry, I know it was a rhetorical question.  But I just *had*
to answer.)
-- 
	Geoff Kuenning   geoff@ITcorp.com   {uunet,trwrb}!desint!geoff