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From: jack@cwi.nl (Jack Jansen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.sys.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Software (and other kinds of) copying
Keywords: technology changes things
Message-ID: <174@piring.cwi.nl>
Date: 20 Jan 88 13:31:20 GMT
References: <8055@g.ms.uky.edu>
Organization: AMOEBA project, CWI, Amsterdam
Lines: 26


Ok, I'll come up with something original.
The problem is capitalism.

I hope this doesn't make me sound like a dogmatic Marxist (I am neither),
but I still feel that capitalism is the problem: people want money back in
return for their efforts, and aren't satisfied with fame or esteem or whatever
else.
Now, that is reasonable if you make 'hardware': a knife is a knife even if
you don't want to share it. But, it doesn't work for ideas. If I write a
beautiful song, but I don't sing it (or, preferrably, let others sing it:-)
in public, I might as well not have written it in the first place. It's value
is in publication.
The same is true for books, philosophies, ideas and (to a certain extent)
software. In this case, I mean the type of software that everyone copies:
games, utilities, all the nifty stuff that you would probably not buy
otherwise. It is probably different for a tailored account program for a big
firm (but who would want to copy that).

I think the GNU people are on the right track: give the software away free,
so that people become to know and love it, and if you want to make money
you charge for other things: support, documentation, training, etc.

-- 
	Jack Jansen, jack@cwi.nl (or jack@mcvax.uucp)
	The shell is my oyster.