NetNews Offline 2/NetNews Offline Volume 2.iso/news/comp/sys/amiga/applications/3006

Internet Message Format | 1996-08-05 | 3.5 KB

Path: m37-312-38.MIT.EDU!sanj
From: [e-mail] (Sanjay S Vakil)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.newton.misc,comp.sys.amiga.applications
Subject: Re: Users are selfish Was Re: crippled software
Date: 8 Mar 1996 18:49:01 GMT
Organization: Massachvsetts Institvte of Technology
Sender: [e-mail] (Sanjay S Vakil)
Message-ID: <4hpvet$[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>  <[e-mail]>  <4hllsv$[e-mail]>  <4hmvq7$[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: m37-312-38.mit.edu

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Jonathan Badger) writes:
>
> The real question is *why* people insist on writing
> shareware. Shareware is a blight upon humanity -- by definition,
> shareware authors are amateur programers who program for fun, and not
> to put food on their table. Why not be a freeware programmer instead?
> You have already discovered that shareware isn't very profitable -- at
> least in writing freeware you get a warm fuzzy feeling of helping
> society.  In the UNIX world shareware is basically non-existant and
> freeware is plentiful -- gcc, emacs, TeX, the X Window System, hell,
> even whole UNIX-compatible operating systems such as Linux and FreeBSD
> are freeware. Why not write freeware yourself? Are you really saying
> that your Mahjongg program was harder to write than emacs? If not, why
> do you demand money for it while no money is required for emacs?

I spent some time thinking about this.  I'll start off with snide answers
to the questions asked:

1.  I have written freeware.

2.  No, I suspect emacs was a mite more difficult.  In fact, I can
honestly say that I have *never* worked on anything as difficult as
emacs.  Gosh!  I should just change jobs, since nothing I've ever
worked on is worth getting paid for.  Bummer.

2a.  Have *you* ever worked on anything harder than emacs?  How can
you sleep at night, realizing that you're getting paid for something
you clearly don't deserve!

3.  Because I own the copyright, people want it, and I *can*.  If
someone else had written it, I would have paid them a reasonable fee.
If you read GNU's manifesto, you'll notice that they are trying
(initially) to make free versions of things that they feel *should* be
free - not end aps, and not full blown turnkey solutions.  Rather,
stuff that is "basic to the system" shouldn't be paid for.  I really
don't feel that Mahjongg falls into this category.


Somewhat more seriously, however, I think that the problem may boil
down to one of semantics.

When Palm put out a demo of Graffiti, no one complained about the fact
that it didn't let them do anything.  In fact, people were excited
that a demo was out at all!

When Ben or Hardy or ICS or Pelican puts out a piece of crippleware,
there exist a set of people who scream bloody murder!  I'm not talking
about those who asked (quite reasonably) for the duration of the test
period to be made available, or those who want to explicitly know what
has been crippled.

So my suggestion is this:

Ben, Hardy et al.  From now on, consider yourselves COMMERCIAL
programmers.  Everything you release to the newton community in any
sort of public forum should be called a DEMO instead of
shareware/crippleware etc.

Instead of being heathens who are defaming the good name of the
freeware martyrs around the world, you will be the brave new face of
the foward-looking commercial software industry.

Semantically yours,
sanj