Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!ncar!mailrus!ulowell!cbmvax!jesup
From: jesup@cbmvax.UUCP (Randell Jesup)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: FREE Software, PD and author compensation
Message-ID: <5500@cbmvax.UUCP>
Date: 14 Dec 88 04:47:50 GMT
References: <12523@cup.portal.com>
Reply-To: jesup@cbmvax.UUCP (Randell Jesup)
Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA
Lines: 109

In article <12523@cup.portal.com> dan-hankins@cup.portal.com (Daniel B Hankins) writes:
>In article <5820@thorin.cs.unc.edu> bell@unc.cs.unc.edu (Andrew Bell) and I
>had a discussion on the merits of free software and author compensation.
>
>1. I said that information should be free, to which Mr. Bell responded that
>   essentially there would be far less software available if information
>   were free.  It ain't necessarily so.

	Very few hypotheticals are "necessarily so".

	The supposition is this: people now are compensated for producing
information that other people want, they are not (in general) compensated
for producing information other people don't want.  This works well, infor-
mation people want tends to get created, and both the person getting the
information and the person selling are happy (or they would not have entered
the transaction - if it costs too much, you don't buy it).

>2. I said that software authors should be compensated for their work, and
>   Mr. Bell said only in proportion to the quality of the product.  He also
>   said that the free market tends to cause this proportionality, implying
>   that I was proposing some sort of welfare system or government subsidy.
>   I am not.

	What _are_ you supporting.  Stallman (who's ideas we have had to go on
so far) has suggested having the government tax people to pay software
authors (I'm not certain he still feels this way).

>3.
>   >Again, why?  Because people will work together more?  Again,  you're
>   >still free to work with whoever you like.
>
>   Am I free to work with whoever I like?  I submit that I am not.  I work
>   for computer company X.  If I work with a person from company Y (the
>   enemy, by definition) then I will be fired from company A, and taken to
>   court for stealing proprietary information.

	But you can certainly leave company X for company Y if you wish.
If you want to work with more than one company, fine, people do it all the
time, and they don't get fired for it if they let people know what's up.
In some cases, they may make it a condition of your employment that you not
work for a competitor: that's fine, it's their perogative, and you presumably
entered into it freely.

>   In a free information society, there would be more cooperation for
>   precisely this reason.  If the information is not secret, then both X
>   and Y benefit from it.  Today, only one of (X, Y) benefits.  This also
>   reinforces my 'double progress' assertion.

	Except the information may not be produced if X has no incentive
(monetary) to produce it.  They won't pay people to compile a big database
if they don't get any competitive advantage to doing so.  So such things
won't get created, in general, except in the odd case where everyone in the
industry agrees to work as a unit (unlikely, for the same reasons: why bother,
and also that's usually falls under the anti-trust laws.)

>4. Mr. Bell asserts that buying programs is the best way to compensate
>   authors, and asks what my system is.  He quotes the only system he knows
>   (shareware) and notes its failure.
>
>     Well, my system is not *that* different from GNU.  In the final phase
>of my system, companies pay other companies money for the service of
>developing software.  Once the software is developed, however, it passes
>into the public domain.

	Who sets the price?  Who decides what other companies pay the one
that developed it?  What if the individuals that benefit from it are
individuals, and not companies?  Does this mean that if company A makes some
software, and companies B-E pay company A, and it gets put in the PD, that
a new company F can start up and get the software all their other competitors
paid for (except maybe A) for free?  Etc, etc.  

	Absolutely unworkable.

>     On the individual user side, users join together into users groups. 
>User groups join together into nationwide usergroup hierarchies.  Part of
>user group dues go into commisioning software authors to produce programs
>for the group.  The group members get to submit ideas for new programs, and
>to vote on new programs (and money to write them) on a local, regional, and
>national level.

	Sounds like a tax to me.  Sounds almost like a second shadow
government.

>     The better a software author is, the more money he or she can demand
>to commision his works - just like an artist.

	Artists are jealous of their copyrights too.  Try copying someones
art (new enough to be under (c)) and selling it.  Usually even buying the
original doesn't include the rights to make copies of it, the author usually
retains that right (though it's usually for sale to).

>     In the case of software beyond the capabilities of an individual, the
>UGH (User Group Hierarchy) may organize some authors to write a program, or
>may hire a software company such as Microsoft to produce the work.
>     Similar service-based schemes work in hobby clubs today.

	There's one HELL of a lot less money to be made in hobby clubs.  And
you could set up your system today, if you wish.  Try it and then tell us how
it does.  Remember, most software's cost to produce is measured in MAN-YEARS,
so we're talking N Years salary plus M % overhead (usually at least 50, maybe
as much as 100%, for equipment, offices, taxes, utilities, legal fees, etc,
etc.)

A couple of quotes to sum up:
"If pigs had wings they could fly if they weren't so fat"
"Sorry, wrong universe, this isn't utopia."

-- 
You've heard of CATS? Well, I'm a member of DOGS: Developers Of Great Software.
Randell Jesup, Commodore Engineering {uunet|rutgers|allegra}!cbmvax!jesup