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From: rang@cs.wisc.edu (Anton Rang)
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss,alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: GNUclear Warfare
Message-ID: <RANG.89Dec15123107@derby.cs.wisc.edu>
Date: 15 Dec 89 18:31:07 GMT
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	<25770F75.3EA@rpi.edu> <1913@texsun.Central.Sun.COM>
	<1989Dec7.075641.13191@news.acc.Virginia.EDU>
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In-reply-to: bzs@world.std.com's message of 13 Dec 89 21:34:45 GMT

In article <1989Dec13.213445.13639@world.std.com> bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes:
>Is it possible...
>
>Is it *just* possible?
>
>That selling $2 floppies for $395 might just not be a completely
>viable way to make a living (that is, without the police coming in to
>hit people over the head with sticks if they don't pay the $395.)

  The cost of developing software is *NOT* related to the cost of a
disk.  Really.  Truly.  I could spend a year developing a software
package, and if I were lucky sell 1,000 copies of it.  What if I'm
charging, say, $10.  That's low enough that piracy probably won't be a
major problem (though it's hard to say).

  Assuming no distribution costs, disk costs, advertising costs, etc.,
I will have a return of $10,000 on my year of work.  I'm not going to
write too much software at that rate.  And selling 1,000 copies of
many software packages is actually not bad at all.

  More realistically, a complex system like Lotus 1-2-3 costs millions
of dollars to develop, write manuals for, and test.  The company has a
responsibility to its shareholders (this is capitalism, after all :-)
to make as high a profit as it can.  So it charges enough to cover its
(considerable) expenses, and to return a reasonable profit to its
shareholders.  $20/copy just isn't going to do it.

>I'm just saying that, well, if I left gold jewelry on a table in a
>public place unattended and it was ripped off there's no doubt the
>people who stole it were thieves.
>
>But there's also no doubt that I was a fool and deserve only minimal
>sympathy from the authorities (ie. the public's tax dollars) in
>recovering my property. Even if it drove me out of business.

  All right, let's think about this...if I wrote a program and sold it
without a near-perfect form of copy-protection, and somebody pirated
it, there's no doubt they were a thief.  But I was a fool to sell it
without the copy-protection.  Therefore, I should sell software only
with copy-protection, even though this may make it less usable.  A lot
of companies used to do this, but luckily many have given up on it.

  This analogy is flawed, anyway...we haven't got copiers for gold
jewelry (yet).  Quite a difference....

		Anton

   
+---------------------------+------------------+-------------+
| Anton Rang (grad student) | rang@cs.wisc.edu | UW--Madison |
+---------------------------+------------------+-------------+