Re: Mostly free software...
[ another email that should be on debian-discuss ]
On Tue, Mar 30, 1999 at 11:59:12AM -0500, Avery Pennarun wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 25, 1999 at 10:35:59PM -0600, David Welton wrote:
> > > Often there's no particular reason for these in-house apps to be
> > > free, but often there is, and there's certainly no harm in it
> > > most of the time.
> > Sure there is, if there is someone else who is paying nothing to
> > use the work that you had to pay a developer for.
> But that isn't causing anyone harm. Many of RMS's writings explain
> why this is so. In short: the people getting freebies weren't going
> to pay _you_ anyway. In fact, they might never have used any kind
> of similar product if it hadn't been free.
Good, if I am a company (which is the point of view that you are
writing from, right?), it would be *good* if my competitors dont' use
as high a quality software as I do.
> That means you're helping yourself, by getting useful software,
> helping a developer, by paying him, and helping another company, by
> providing useful software.
Umm, I don't *want* to help my competitors. Maybe, if it's not a core
product, it won't be that important, but, if I spend a lot of money
and time paying someone to develop really nice code, from scratch,
that is central to my business, I'll be damned if I'll hand it over to
the competition for free.
Ciao,
--
David N. Welton | Fortune rota volvitur - descendo minoratus
davidw@prosa.it | alter in altum tollitur - nimis exaltatus
http://www.efn.org/~davidw | rex sedet in vertice - caveat ruinam!
www.debian.org - www.prosa.it | nam sub axe legimus - Hecubam reginam
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