Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 22:51:53 -0600 (MDT) From: Clod Baldrick <baldrick@rmsq.com> To: Michael Rice <marice@email.msn.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: commercial software Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.95q.980514224234.17733A-100000@corsair> In-Reply-To: <018901bd7f96$72f7b420$6e00cbc0@rice-home>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Thu, 14 May 1998, Michael Rice wrote: > If I need some software to get a job done, I don't mind paying for it. The > creator of the software deserves to get paid for providing that software. > By buying the software (as opposed to pirating it), I am helping another > human being...I'm helping him earn a living and providing him/her incentive > to create more and better software. You have a touching faith that the majority of commercial software helps anyone "earn a living" apart from stock holders,[1] or that buying a piece of commercial software gives incentive to some cobol charlie in a cubicle in the middle of the desert to "create more and better software". These days, incentives to create software are more likely to be found by the authors of free software. These people either write software as a volunteer activity (where a large part of the incentive is the process of writing it) or, in more and more cases, are hired by software companies to write it. > I do use quite a bit of freeware, thanks to all the gracious authors. > However, I am a capitalist to the bone. I love to see new and innovative > products in the commercial world; I also love to see the creators of those > products rake in as much $$$ as possibile - they deserve it. But the people who rake in the *really* big bucks are the stock holders, not the designers and programmers. > What you speak of just reeks of Socialism. I don't want to start a political flame-fest here, but many people would say that socialism is not in and of itself a bad thing. > BTW, I _love_ Microsoft products and I think Bill Gates is King. Surely that's a troll? Regards. -- Clod Baldrick RMS, Longmont CO [1] OK, this is rather disingenuous. I admit it: a *small* proportion of the profits from a piece of software may go towards paying the salary of the programmers who wrote it. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.BSF.3.95q.980514224234.17733A-100000>