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From: cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
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
Message-ID: <1861@optilink.UUCP>
Date: 21 Jan 88 16:54:19 GMT
References: <8055@g.ms.uky.edu> <174@piring.cwi.nl>
Organization: Optilink Corporation, Petaluma, CA
Lines: 49

> 
> 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.

Odd, isn't it?  Some people actually want to pay the rent, and save for
their retirement, and go on vacation occasionally.

A company I used to work for had a General Manager who told us one day
that working in Engineering was different from Marketing or Sales because
there was "psychic income" from being creative.  Alas, stores don't accept 
"psychic income" in exchange for tangible goods.

> 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.

Huh?  If your motivation is fame or esteem, very true.  But most people are
motivated by a desire to live a more comfortable life -- not to be center
stage.

> 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).

Wrong.  The stuff that gets pirated include word processors, spreadsheets,
data base managers -- that's why there's a major industry producing books
about the more popular software products that replicate the content of the
manuals -- frequently with no other additions.

> 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)

But if esteem and fame are enough for software, why not support, documentation
and training?  What makes software different from these other categories of
human endeavor?

Clayton E. Cramer