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Re: [LUG] GLUG - free and non-free



On Monday 11 October 2004 10:23 am, Jon Lawrence wrote:

I agree with everything else, except this:

Writing code costs money - there's no doubt about this.

Writing code does not cost any money. SUPPORTING code costs bucket loads of 
money.

There is no reason why code should cost money to create or copy. No-one has 
paid a penny for any of the code I've ever written.

1. Windows programmers often quote the price of their compiler - Duh! use a 
free compiler! (and don't use Windows).

2. Some programmers are paid to work full time on code - this is similar to 
some personalities who are paid to make speeches. It does NOT mean that 
anyone making an after dinner speech can expect to get paid! The logic here 
is simple:
All ripe lemons are yellow therefore everything yellow is a ripe lemon. Ooops.

3. Just because you do pay for an after dinner speaker, does NOT mean the 
content/quality of the speech will be higher than if you asked your Dad.

4. If you can't find a sponsor, do NOT presume that you must be paid to 
generate code. Meet your financial needs through other routes, like most free 
software programmers.

5. On GNU/Linux, you paid nothing to obtain and use the software that is 
editing - emacs / KDE etc - or compiling your code - gcc - so why should you 
be paid for what you produce using a free software tool? Fine if you can be 
paid, but you cannot PRESUME that payment will be made.

But if you intend a 
decent size user base, then the cost of writing the software pales in to
insignificance with the cost of supporting that software.

True, anything compared with zero is infinite.


Jon

-- 

Neil Williams
=============
http://www.codehelp.co.uk/
http://www.dclug.org.uk/
http://www.isbn.org.uk/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/isbnsearch/

http://www.biglumber.com/x/web?qs=0x8801094A28BCB3E3

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