... Or are you referring to the fact that I do use Windows?
By providing resources to a government-enforced monopoly that
restricts what people I know and what I can do, you hurt me and my
friends. I suspect you do not do much hurting and that you try to
compensate, but nonetheless, you are hurting me and my friends. That
is why I become angry.
Technology has advanced over the past half century. Things that you
`cannot drop on your foot', such as software programs, have become
easier to manufacture. Indeed, they have become so easy to
manufacture that we do not refer to the duplication process as
`manufacturing'; we refer to it has `copying'.
If I worked at Toyota, it would not sound strange for me to say, `we
manufactured another car'. But it does sound strange to say that `I
manufactured another Emacs' when I copied an instance.
Software takes many resources to write the first instance of a
program. (And it takes many resources to buy a computer.) But it
takes few resources to make copies. It takes huge resources -- very
competent people, in particular -- to write and maintain Emacs. But
it takes few resources to make another copy of Emacs -- so few
resources that I did not think twice this morning when I updated my
CVS. Software is a `high initial/low incremental' cost good.
Law and social customs that apply to `high initial/high incremental'
cost goods should not be applied to items with low incremental costs.
But they are.
Partly this is because of social and legal inertia. Partly this is
because people don't know a better way to fund high initial costs.
Many people do not think of companies reducing complementary costs, of
consortiums, of trade associations, of universities, of governments,
and (to go by Aristotle) of individuals' rising wealth as providing
ways to fund high initial cost actions. And partly this is because
those who profit from charging this kind of high incremental prices
need not themselves pay the whole cost.
I wish you would help more to change laws and social customs that
apply to `high initial/low incremental' cost activities rather than
support, even just a little, inethical laws and social customs. But I
do not know you or your conditions; only that you are hurting me and
people I know.
--
Robert J. Chassell
[EMAIL PROTECTED] GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
http://www.rattlesnake.com http://www.teak.cc
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