Xref: utzoo comp.sys.apple:5677 comp.sys.ibm.pc:14822 comp.windows.misc:492 Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!looking!brad From: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple,comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.windows.misc Subject: Re: A Nutty Idea Keywords: volunteer GNU-like PD freeware Message-ID: <1570@looking.UUCP> Date: 24 Apr 88 16:17:23 GMT References: <231@unsvax.UUCP> <6276@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <138@bud.UUCP> <2642@bsu-cs.UUCP> Reply-To: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd. Lines: 29 In article <2642@bsu-cs.UUCP> dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) writes: >Let's not forget the economic concept of relative advantage. Rather >than getting lots of people to each volunteer 5 hours of their time to >write public domain software, it might be better for these people to >volunteer 5 hours of their wages, pool the resulting money, buy the >rights to good existing software, and release it to the public domain. >-- >Rahul Dhesi UUCP: !{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!dhesi Finally somebody says something sane on this issue. Anybody who's ever actually worked on a real programming project knows that thinking you can get a program out of 5 hours from 500 programmers is like thinking that 9 women can have a baby in 1 month. And Mr. Dhesi is also correct that it would be best to buy existing software. Software written by somebody who believed that it would have to please customers who paid real money, and somebody who believed that they would have to support the software after it was done. If you tried to start a new project, you would have to trust the administrators and coders a great deal. Even then, there would be a good chance of failure. And what if it got behind schedule (we know that never happens 8-)) or went over budget (we know that never happens 8-)). You could buy a surprising number of packages for $100K. None of the real good ones, but many of the medium to good ones. -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473