On Aug 16, 2007, at 19:31, [email protected] wrote:
And as typical for mac software, absolutely trivial programs all want
15
to 30 bucks for doing things like... converting line terminations for
text files.
Same as on Windows. If you need a program for doing something trivial
and you can't figure out how to do it, you pay someone to do it for
you. The same thing on Palm, Pocket PC, Amiga, and everywhere else that
an actual money-based ecosystem exists, people are willing to pay for
trivial stuff, and people are willing to pay them for it.
The existence of a money-based ecosystem is somewhat orthogonal to the
existence of a merit- or reputation-based ecosystem like the ones for
free and open source software. There are platforms that have both. The
Mac is one of them.
Yes, trivial software with a price tag is hateful. Don't use it, okay,
I don't. But I hate it so much that the mere *existence* of the crap
is
enough to piss me off.
I'm sorry to hear that. Do you hate the existence of prerecorded
cassette tapes or boxed free software installation CDROMs too? My
father didn't like it when I bought pre-recorded tapes instead of
buying vinyl and cutting my own tapes, but he didn't get pissed off
about it.
The worst are the bottom-feeders that port a free software application
to the mac (ie. create a configuration dialog) and then charge 30 bucks
for their modifications.
Write an Applescript or Tcl/Tk or Java or whatever alternative and give
it away. Or don't get mad if you're not willing to get even.
