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- Path: sparky!uunet!think.com!barmar
- From: barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin)
- Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss
- Subject: Availability of FSF code (was Re: Fund raising at the FSF)
- Date: 4 Jan 1993 05:58:23 GMT
- Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
- Lines: 30
- Message-ID: <1i8jlvINNn28@early-bird.think.com>
- References: <1993Jan2.231845.18945@husc3.harvard.edu> <C0B32v.2Br@comp.vuw.ac.nz> <1i8cgeINN8l6@shelley.u.washington.edu>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: gandalf.think.com
-
- In article <1i8cgeINN8l6@shelley.u.washington.edu> tzs@stein.u.washington.edu (Tim Smith) writes:
- >As a programmer, I find Microsoft source code as available to me as FSF
- >source code. That is, not at all.
-
- >Compare two hypothetical situtations:
-
- >Situtation 1:
- [Can't use Microsoft source because it's not available.]
- >Situtation 2:
- [Can't use FSF source because hired to write a proprietary program.]
-
- >Looks the same to me.
-
- The difference is that in situation 2, your employers could conceivably
- decide to copyleft the resulting program, getting around the problem. But
- it's much harder to get around the problem in situation 1.
-
- In many situations it might even make economic sense to make software
- non-proprietary so that you can incorporate FSF code. Suppose it saves you
- a man-year of work in development, and a man-month per year of ongoing
- maintenance, and you charge $5K for the program. Calling a man-year $120K,
- you break even if the non-proprietariness of the program results in 26
- fewer sales the first year and 2 fewer sales/year in the future, and you
- come out ahead if there were fewer sales lost. For specialized
- applications, those numbers may not be a problem.
- --
- Barry Margolin
- System Manager, Thinking Machines Corp.
-
- barmar@think.com {uunet,harvard}!think!barmar
-