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From: jb3o+@andrew.cmu.edu (Jon Allen Boone)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: GNUclear Warfare
Message-ID: <4ZW1ijS00WBKE1qh5C@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: 14 Dec 89 22:16:15 GMT
References: <2558@flatline.UUCP> <4639@sugar.hackercorp.com> <25770F75.3EA@rpi.edu> <1913@texsun.Central.Sun.COM> <1989Dec7.075641.13191@news.acc.Virginia.EDU> <4754@sugar.hackercorp.com> <1989Dec13.213445.13639@world.std.com>,
	<4757@sugar.hackercorp.com>
Organization: Class of '92, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
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In-Reply-To: <4757@sugar.hackercorp.com>

Peter DaSilva writes:

>I'm the other side. I'm not the SPA. I don't agree with their goals.

Ever hear the saying that there are *more* than two sides to every story?

>There are two kinds of software, with two kinds of market. Commercial
>software, primarily oriented towards computer-naive users. And Free
>software, primarly oriented towards computer geeks. Each has their place.
>I have written a lot of both, myself.

Perhaps there is a better way to distinguish between the two types. 
There is commercial software which is written primarily because the
people involved want to make money and they think that writing programs
for a living is a lot easier and a lot more fun than digging ditches or
serving in the armed forces or working as a social worker.

Then there is public domain software which is written by people who love
to program, people who need a package that does something a commercial
program doens~t do (or asks too much money for), or people who just
wrote a little program and thought that someone else might want to use
it.

Then there~s FSF and GNU software.  GNU software is good (ie. it~s worth
using).  I think that most people here would agree, otherwise this
discussion wouldn~t be raging.  Now, going on the assumption that GNU is
good software and you will want to use it, what *better* way for rms to
get you to do what he wants than by using the very same rules and
regulations that corporations like Microsoft use to charge more for
their programs than some people (myself included) think it is
worthwhile.  Some people have said that no one is forcing us to *buy*
software we think is overpriced (disregarding any lack of software to do
what we *need* it to do) - we can either write our own or do without. 
Now, some other people (or was it the same people?) are saying that they
really wish that rms and the FSF would change their minds and forget
about GPL and the copyleft because they would *really* like to use bison
and gcc (or whatever the particular programs were) and its hard to find
software thats as nice as that for what they want to do (in their
opinion, of course).  Now, we *could* say "Hey - you lose!  No one is
forcing you to use GNU software - so take a flying leap and get the heck
out of our faces - go do your own thing"  In fact, some claim that this
has been said "Write your own <smirk>"  Well, that~s what rms did - he
didn~t like the actions that some group was taking, he had access to
their stuff, he reversed engineered the software and viola - he had a
version to use (or give away as i believe he did) and he didn~t have to
put up with the other people bs.

So, to make a short point even more long winded -> compromise is *not*
out of the question for most of the people who support GNU.  As for rms
and the FSF i can not speak for them.  However, note that i am not
against *shareware* where i can send the author however much *i decide*
the program is worth to me.

>The GNU folks don't seem to understand that there's rhyme or reason to
>commercial software.

The GNU folks, contrary to your opinions, specifically mention your
stated concerns about commercial software -> they not only allow, but
will provide you with a list of people who offer *support and
hand-holding* for their software.  They also encourage you to do the
same thing (rms does it).  On the other hand, they do say - if i want to
run your program without the expensive cost of supporting other users,
etc. i should be able to do so.


>Let's see you write a free IBM-compatible BIOS. But why should you? It's
>not of any interest to computer nerds.

Of course not!  Computer nerds would *never* be interested in actually
building hardware!  Computer nerds are only interested in compilers,
debuggers, and the latest version of tetris.  Get real.  If no one is
interested in BIOS, then why does Phoenix claim that pirates are running
them out of business?  Now, the fact that *most* pirates are high-school
kids, most of whom have neither access  to nor the information we in
college (and out of college) have could well explain why they don~t
write their own - they don~t know how!  You should not assume that
simply because it hasn~t been done - it won~t be.  Or that it isn~t a
fun hack.  What is fun for you is a different kind of pain for me.  What
i consider fun you probably consider bizarre or wierd or even stupid. 
What you *can* say (and what i gather you are saying) is that given that
MicroSoft hadn~t written Excel or Word, you sure-as-blue-blazes wouldn~t
have either.


>If the pirates (yes, pirates) are so damn good, let them write their own
>freeware version of XYZcalc. If they can, they'll put XYZco out of business.
>Otherwise, XYZco has made a significant investment and created a new good
>that they wouldn't have created if they weren't going to make money at it.

See previous post about "pirates".  Note: pirates and supporters of GNU
are not an identical set - ie. they do not contain all of the same
members.  While some pirates would support GNU, most that i know would
not - they are not interested in intellectual property rights, they
simply think that the computer industry charges too much for the
software - so one guy buys it and the rest get it for free....let~s
see....$30 ... 1000 copies....that~s not too bad...what~s that?  3 cents
a copy? (my math may be wrong - i am not a math major)

pirating is a purely reactionary action - it attempts to circumvent an
industry that, like *you* Mr. DaSilva ignores them or worse yet, calls
them computer nerds in an attempted insult (apparently).

>And GNU will never produce an XYZcalc clone. It's not cool.

I don~t know about XYZcalc, but if you bother to *read* the GNU
manifesto, it specifically states that rms intends to have one
spreadsheet - (barring contributions from others).  Now, if *you~re* so
good at programming, why don~t *you* write a XYZcalc clone and use GNU
source for part of it so that it falls under GPL  - that way, you~ll be
happy, rms will be one step closer to completing his GNU, and we~ll all
heap loads and loads of praises on you.  All hail Eris!  All hail Slack!
 All hail DaSilva!  Of course, we probably won~t *pay* you much, but
then again, you never know - if XYZcalc is such a hot thing, then maybe
we~ll all just fall over ourselves in order to give you what we consider
just recompense.  Note: you *can* sell GNU software.  but you *must*
tell people that it is available for free - provided you don~t charge
outrages prices, you could make a decent amount of money simply by
providing a gnu for pcs or (god-and-rms-forbid) macs - most people, like
you say, are too clueless to do it themselves, so you could still make
money off of them, and i still wouldn~t have to pay you for a service
that i don~t *need* from you!

>But they don't make their own. They steal it and sell it for 5 kopeks.

Again you falaciously mix GNU and pirating in the same barrel.  Pirates
steal teh software and then trade it for other stolen goods.  GNUers
give away the software which is free in the first place (no theft
involved) and sell hand-holding support and GNU provision services.  As
you say, there is a wide demand for this kind of thing, so you should
have no problem making a lot of money doing it.  I have friends back
home who are barely out of high-school (and did it while in high-school)
who make $25 to $50 an hour selling consultation services - they don~t
write the software - they don~t even provide the software - they simply
hold hands and walk away with lots o cash.  Now, why should the user
have to pay an additional $400 for the original piece of software?  With
the amount of cluelessness in the world today, it is not uncommon for
them to make $200 or even $300 dollars in two days.

>And that's why I'm getting disgusted with folks like you who can't tell
>the difference between naive users... who need a hell of a lot of
>handholding (but don't want to pay for it)... and computer freaks.

I won~t say that your disgusting, but....:-)

seriously, you make similar errors in assuming things.  first, the
clueless ones are paying for handholding - check out the people who are
supposedly providing this "no-charge handholding" - the same people who
payed the programmer to "write" the program and usually the quality of
their handholding is barely above "what - a system error - oh, that
means you gotta reboot!"  Gee, that~s worth the extra amount of money i
paid for that piece of software.  

Secondly, as i gave an example of above, people are often turning to
consultants in order to get their handholding, as
joe-average-software-house doesn~t provide adequate support or worse yet
(like Borland) they drop support of their programs - where are we to
turn to then, mr. dasilva, if not to consultants who have found it worth
their while to learn how to use Turbo Pascal for the mac (one of the
reasons i stopped using macs on a regular basis around Christmas last
year).
I have often provided consultation for these same consultants - for
free.  my primary pursuit is *not* money - it is knowledge.  rather than
charging people $25 to $50 an hour in order to pay my tuition, i take
out loans and beg and plead the government to help me out.  Perhaps
you~d rather i charged people more money than i thought my services were
worth (the only way i could afford the $18,855 approx. that it costs to
go to CMU).  I, instead work for $4.50 an hour at the library and as a
computer cluster attendant - i give a decent amount of handholding,
watch the computers, file maintainence reports, etc. - all jobs that
someone needs to do in order for us to have computer labs for the
students, and i still make a comfortable living - $321 is my next
projected paycheck - for only two weeks of work (34 hours one week and
31.5 another week, some of which were from midnight to 8am at 5.62 an
hour - we leave it up to the serious netter to figure out how many
graveyards i worked these last two weeks )  I don~t live expansively -
in fact, most of my money goes for long-distance calls back home to
texas and for food, school books, clothing and incedentals.  It~s not
much, but i~m happy.
  


>The only other solution is to make the software incomprehensible without
>a lot of real handholding and sell support. That's the society you're gonna
>create if you win.

That~s not true.  If "naive users" need as much handholding as you
claim, then you will have no shortage of people asking you for
consultations.  However, you will not have the *computer geeks* asking
you for help - they~ll figure it out themselves.  What~s wrong with
that?  You yourself say that computer geeks make up a small portion of
computer users.  Are you saying that you couldn~t afford to absorb the
potential loss of business (not really, as computer geeks probalby woudl
avoid your software anyway - or steal it) that comes from sharing your
source and only providing hand-holding (the prevalent need as you seem
to state it).  If, perchance, you were to decide to sell me the source,
i would probably turn around and incorportate it into something that
falls under the GPL so that it would have to be made available upon
request.  Given equal access to resources, the programmer who produces
the code best suited for the market will make the most money (so says
free-market economy theory).  What~s the matter, afraid of a little
competition?  Already we have a lack of access to resources due to the
physical nature of hardware - why should you be allowed to impose a
restriction on an intangible think like the random spewings of your mind
(assumign creativity is spewing and programming is creative).  If you
want credit, then there~s certainly nothing wrong with that - however,
why should you be able to force everyone else to pay you and then not
even give them the things that may well be most useful to them - the
source code.  

Of course, you could alway says (with a tone of superiority) "well, if
you want it, then reverse engineer it!"


>-- 
>Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva <peter@sugar.hackercorp.com>
           yes, i have - and he liked it too.       
>`-_-'
> 'U`  "I haven't lost my mind, it's backed up on tape somewhere"

oh yeah?

well....


iain the flippant | You'll PAY To Know What You REALLY Think |
jb3o@andrew.cmu.edu(INTERNET) | Your MIND Left Intentionally Blank |
R746JB3O@cmccvb(BITNET) | SCIENCE DOES NOT REMOVE THE TERROR OF THE GODS|
disclaimer: anything I say may be wrong - I don't represent anyone but me