Will Hill wrote: >>>How do you suppose software developers should make a living? >>> >>> >>how about selling support for the crappy software they write? >>bb >> >> >> > >The same way lawyers, doctors, engineers and just about everyone else earns a >living. They master a body of public knowledge and apply it skillfully. >Would you trust a lawyer who would not let you see briefs submitted on your >behalf? A doctor who would not let anyone see his office or tell you what >medicine you are taking? What would you think of a doctor that discovered a >new treatment and then kept it secret? Most people are still outraged by >behavior like that. > > The analogy just isn't there. The software industry is not protected in the same manner that doctors and lawyers are. Besides, if I write a tool that eveyrone likes, even if it's closed source, everyone still gets to use it....just not for free-forever-and-always like RMS wants. Giving away code that took manhours to write is not supportive of any kind of industry whatsoever. Doctors and lawyers would quickly go out of business if their treatment methods and cases were freely reusable forever.
>We're not talking about "developers" anyway. Most of them do earn their pay >just like any other professional. They solve problems for their clients. >Few of them suffer from intellectual retentiveness. > > I'm not giving away any code that I write for my company. Neither is my company. They have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into me and my code. Why should people who have paid no money get to take what I've written and use all of it for their own ends? So I guess the company and I suffer from intellectual retentiveness. >The problem, for everyone, is big software and other publishers. They buy and >sell other people's work. They want to own the very idea behind that work >and keep real developers from being able to compete. > This isn't true. They own implementations of ideas. TiVo does not own a video time-shifting recorder device idea. They own their proprietary bolt-ons to the Linux base system and their implementations of hardware. Microsoft does not own "graphical user interface" operating systems. They own their particular implementation of what a GUI should look like according to the corporation which paid a bunch of people to develop it. > Run away copyright and >patent laws will run developers out of the market faster than free tools they >can share and exploit. Big publishers love the tools their retentive peers >in the software industry have come up with to eliminate customer choice, such >as "trusted computing" and "digital rights management". > This is a whole different ball of wax than what RMS is talking about. Trusted Computing prevents pirated software from being run and *may* prevent the Linux operating system from being run. (As an aside I refuse to believe the Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers will sell retail boxed motherboards and cpus that cannot have LInux installed on them) This has nothing to do with the ideal of "all software should be free" which is ridiculous IMHO. > You don't get more >freaky and controlling than that. If the freaks had their way, you still >would not be able to attach your 2400 baud modem to your phone line without >paying a big fat licensing fee. > > Again, whole different ball of wax. The government prevented that and should continue to prevent any abuses that exist. > >_______________________________________________ >General mailing list >[email protected] >http://brlug.net/mailman/listinfo/general_brlug.net > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/general_brlug.net/attachments/20050924/8c920fd9/attachment-0001.htm From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sat Sep 24 10:00:11 2005 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (-ray) Date: Sat Sep 24 10:00:01 2005 Subject: HTML mail (was Re: [brlug-general] to release or not to release, intellectual retentiveness.) In-Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> References: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sorry this is a rant, but my mail client doesn't "do" colors, so i can't tell what you're quoting and what you're writing. Makes your post very difficult to read. Whenever i can i encourage people to turn off html in their mail client. >From a security standpoint (spam, spyware, etc), html mail is more evil than IE. ray On Sat, 24 Sep 2005, Andrew Baudouin wrote: > Will Hill wrote: > >>>> How do you suppose software developers should make a living? >>>> >>> how about selling support for the crappy software they write? >>> bb >>> >>> >> >> The same way lawyers, doctors, engineers and just about everyone else earns >> a living. They master a body of public knowledge and apply it skillfully. >> Would you trust a lawyer who would not let you see briefs submitted on your >> behalf? A doctor who would not let anyone see his office or tell you what >> medicine you are taking? What would you think of a doctor that discovered >> a new treatment and then kept it secret? Most people are still outraged by >> behavior like that. > The analogy just isn't there. The software industry is not protected in the > same manner that doctors and lawyers are. Besides, if I write a tool that > eveyrone likes, even if it's closed source, everyone still gets to use > it....just not for free-forever-and-always like RMS wants. Giving away code > that took manhours to write is not supportive of any kind of industry > whatsoever. Doctors and lawyers would quickly go out of business if their > treatment methods and cases were freely reusable forever. > >> We're not talking about "developers" anyway. Most of them do earn their >> pay just like any other professional. They solve problems for their >> clients. Few of them suffer from intellectual retentiveness. > I'm not giving away any code that I write for my company. Neither is my > company. They have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into me and my > code. Why should people who have paid no money get to take what I've written > and use all of it for their own ends? So I guess the company and I suffer > from intellectual retentiveness. > >> The problem, for everyone, is big software and other publishers. They buy >> and sell other people's work. They want to own the very idea behind that >> work and keep real developers from being able to compete. > This isn't true. They own implementations of ideas. > > TiVo does not own a video time-shifting recorder device idea. They own their > proprietary bolt-ons to the Linux base system and their implementations of > hardware. > > Microsoft does not own "graphical user interface" operating systems. They > own their particular implementation of what a GUI should look like according > to the corporation which paid a bunch of people to develop it. > > > >> Run away copyright and patent laws will run developers out of the market >> faster than free tools they can share and exploit. Big publishers love the >> tools their retentive peers in the software industry have come up with to >> eliminate customer choice, such as "trusted computing" and "digital rights >> management". >> > This is a whole different ball of wax than what RMS is talking about. > Trusted Computing prevents pirated software from being run and *may* prevent > the Linux operating system from being run. (As an aside I refuse to believe > the Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers will sell retail boxed motherboards > and cpus that cannot have LInux installed on them) > This has nothing to do with the ideal of "all software should be free" which > is ridiculous IMHO. > >> You don't get more freaky and controlling than that. If the freaks had >> their way, you still would not be able to attach your 2400 baud modem to >> your phone line without paying a big fat licensing fee. > Again, whole different ball of wax. The government prevented that and should > continue to prevent any abuses that exist. > >> >> _______________________________________________ >> General mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://brlug.net/mailman/listinfo/general_brlug.net >> >> > > -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ray DeJean http://www.r-a-y.org Systems Engineer Southeastern Louisiana University IBM Certified Specialist AIX Administration, AIX Support =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
