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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!network.ucsd.edu!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!psinntp!uuneo!sugar!peter From: peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva) Subject: Re: So you say you want an interim release of 386bsd? (What to do?) Organization: NeoSoft Communications Services -- (713) 684-5900 Date: Mon, 10 May 1993 05:26:38 GMT Message-ID: <C6spsF.C2L@sugar.NeoSoft.COM> References: <C6M5J0.AIq@sugar.neosoft.com> <C6oF5x.9or@megatest.com> <1993May10.023016.25206@Sandelman.OCUnix.on.ca> Lines: 62 In article <1993May10.023016.25206@Sandelman.OCUnix.on.ca> mcr@Sandelman.OCUnix.on.ca (Michael Richardson) writes: > There is nothing in the GPL to prevent you from `commercializing' > software. What it really prevents you from doing is a quick sale of > some code and then disappearing. It also prevents you from selling software in a hostile environment and then hanging around. How are you supposed to make a living on software sales at a few dozen to a few hundred bucks a pop when after the first few sales the market's gone? Support? Well, that takes us to the next point: > I've never quite figured out why BUYERS of software, especially PC > software haven't been screaming bloody murder over the kind of > customer service they are getting. They have. They also scream bloody murder over the kind of software that requires ongoing customer support. Cygnus can make it because they're supporting a product in an environment where support is expected: a complex and powerful set of developer tools *to* software developers. For most commodity software, if they call the support line it means *the vendor* has fucked up. They shouldn't be *expected* to provide the vendor with its primary revenue stream here. Hell, they already get upset enough at vendors that try to do simple cost recovery on support calls. > Case example: Apparently WP craps all over floppy FAT tables when > used on a Novell network. Have you written software for DOS? I'm not a fan of Word Perfect, but it's damn hard to maintain software in such a fragile environment. The floppy FAT tables shouldn't even be visible to a word processor. > It doesn't happen every time, but it happens > often. Ever try explaining to some poor psych or english major who > just got over a major conceptual hurdle and figured out how to use the > damn wordprocessor, WHY their document has been trashed? Yep. "You bought the wrong operating system. Oh, sorry, there isn't a better one you could have bought. Well, there are a bunch of people working on building one, but they're wasting time explaining why they couldn't expect to sell it through regular retail channels if they had no recourse against piracy". Now let's have a digression: > You know why the suits are so thrilled about OOP languages? It is > really clear and simple if you used the Foo Class or not. ``Software > ICs'' Software ICs exist. OOP languages do *not* make it that much easier to build them... designing a system with a clean factoring of responsibilities between components is needed for that, and if you do that you'll end up with a software IC no matter what the target language is... and if you don't you won't even if you target an OOP language. Ever hear of Spaghetti Inheritance? > --- and 30,000 lawyers to work out all the licensing required. Back to the point, of course: the question of software patents is separate from the issue of software copyright. You can support the LPF without buying into the goals of the FSF. -- Peter da Silva. <peter@sugar.neosoft.com>. `-_-' Har du kramat din varg idag? 'U` "Det er min ledsager, det er ikke drikkepenge."