On Sat, Apr 22, 2006 at 10:08:12PM -0600, Monique Y. Mudama wrote: > On 2006-04-22, Steve Lamb penned: > > > > Funny, the #1 point for most people is apt, not the social > > contract. #1 for *you* maybe. > > Who are these most people, and why should it matter to the developers > what "most people" want when they're not paying customers? > Hi Monique, propietary software developers are paid to make the company profitable and this is done when users buy the software. If the users dont buy the software, the company finds out why and asks the developers to fix things that will make the users buy the software. This is not a complete model as users do not get a direct say but things like photoshop or quicken seem to get high praise from users after every new release. In this context, free software user can never buy the software from a company because their is no company and their is no legal monetary contact between Debian and its developers and thus no one can make the free software developers do anything. The free software model does allow a free market whereby any other developer can be paid or convinced to do what you want. But it seems the free software developers are usually simply 'scratching their itch' to their satisfaction and others may or may not like the result. And the average users is more or less powerless to force the free software developer to listen to them sans forking over money and the developers accepting a contract to do what they want. There are other reasons free software developers listen to users including their commitment to social and moral principals and issues but it does not guarentee the same result as in a commercial setting. Obviously one difference is that propietary software developers use restrictive licenses. cheers, Kev -- | .''`. == Debian GNU/Linux == | my web site: | | : :' : The Universal | debian.home.pipeline.com | | `. `' Operating System | go to counter.li.org and | | `- http://www.debian.org/ | be counted! #238656 | | my keysever: pgp.mit.edu | my NPO: cfsg.org |
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