Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]

[Larry McVoy]

On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 03:04:33PM +0100, David Woodhouse wrote:
> On Mon, 2003-06-23 at 14:37, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > > Neither am I arguing that you, personally, should be trying to make a
> > > living by support alone -- I'm merely observing a trend. 
> > 
> > And I'm pointing out that the logic on which that trend is based has some
> > severe problems.  
> 
> Ah, but attempting to associate observed trends with actual logic is a
> fruitless task attempted only by economists and loons :)

Well that explains it, I'm an economist^Wloon :)

> > I don't know about you, but I don't want to be part of
> > a business who's business model is to ship incomplete or broken software
> > and then charge to fix it.  
> 
> And even if my viewpoint were different I'm not convinced I agree with
> you -- after all, this isn't a problem which is specific to Free
> Software, surely? If you produce the perfect word processor or a car
> which doesn't rust, you never get repeat business either :)

The difference is that I can charge a price for the word processor which
gives me enough profit to build the spread sheet application.  If you are
trying to do the same thing but your app is GPLed, you can forget about it.
The market won't pay $300 for something they can download for free.