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On Monday 11 October 2004 3:57 pm, Jon Lawrence wrote:
On Monday 11 October 2004 12:16, Neil Williams wrote: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.Sorry, but no. Writing code costs money (for most people) whether it is significant amounts or not depends on how many people are writing that code. Computers cost money, heating costs money, and last time I checked my electricity wasn't free :) The actual coding itself costs time.
Here I go again. I've had this discussion many times on many lists. (Must add it to a wiki somewhere!!!) No, no, no. Writing code does not cost money. People like me write code in our sleep. Does that cost me? (Yes, it's true, I dream in C.) :-)) What about in the car, stuck at the lights? I came up with my latest bright idea in the shower - any costs to that? Are you going to put a price on thought? Are you going to charge me for reading your email? After all, that is the content of your thoughts and a form of speech. How much did that email cost you? When you speak to someone at a meeting, face to face, are you going to charge per word? Code is NOT a material, physical object. It cannot be touched, held, ripped, burnt, eaten, crushed, melted or even photographed. You make the mistake of seeing a PHYSICAL object - the monitor, the hard drive, the light bulb, and thinking that IT represents the data. No, no, no, no, NO! The physical objects may cost money and consume resources which cost money, but the CODE is not a physical object. It exists in my mind, it exists in your mind when you read it. It exists as bytes on a filesystem and pixels on the screen. It consumes no resources when stored - turn off your PC and it's still stored but consuming no power. (providing you saved it!)
Just to point out, I'm not a coder as such never mind one good enough to charge for my work
This is the usual source for such confusion. Have another think about things and consider again that code is speech, not a sandwich.
But as we agree, these costs bare into insignificance compared to supporting said software.
Yes, support can be expensive. There are free methods of support too, including ones that are free in terms of cost as well as speech. This is one.
If a company charges for software then they can damn well support it.
Exactly - and not expect others to do it for them.
Also I believe that if they charge me for their software which then crashes my system causing loss of data/work, then they owe me compensation. This is normally refused as a condition in their license, but clauses are widely believed to be unenforceable - but I've never come across any court cases that challenge these clauses (not that I've looked closely).
Loss of data in an application in a system crash usually cannot be blamed on the application because the application writer has a legitimate expectation that the rest of the system will perform as described in the API. No API defines what happens when the system screws up. If you lose data because of a BUG in the software, that's different. If you can prove that the bug, e.g. by setting up an infinite loop condition, caused a previously reliable system to run out of memory and crash, you might have a case - a case that would still be thrown out if you weren't using the latest version, I might add.
It is my belief that companies that charge for software (then offer little or no support) will die where as companies that effectively give away software (or at least the source) and charge for support will prosper - time will tell.
I hope so, but as so often before, quality doesn't always win. -- 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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