Hi Les,
We probably don't disagree as much as you may think, but...
On Tue, 2013-04-16 at 11:42 +0100, Leszek Kobiernicki 1 wrote:
> On Mon, 2013-04-15 at 23:25 +0100, Daniel Llewellyn wrote: ( snip )
>
> Well, someone, somewhere has to pay something, somehow, or many people simply
> wouldn't produce 'free' (beer) software.
>
> *****************************
>
> Just look at reboot. pro: the devs. there don't charge, but do their
> self-imposed tasks gratis.
So _they_ are paying with their time.
> Doubtless, they are in paid employment in a
> company,
...or possibly _they_ are paying.
> so do their creative work, in their spare time, purely for the
> love of it - which, to my mind, is a perfectly good arrangement ( I,
> too, did the same, for many years ).
Indeed.
Lots of students produce software, too. If they're in private education,
their parents are probably paying, if it's state education, then
probably you and I are paying for stuff done in the UK, at east.
> I would argue that it's entirely fair to charge for tech support
absolutely.
> in
> resolving device-specific knotty problems
Or indeed just where it may be more convenient to pay someone else to
sort things out.
> But software is only really a toolbox, and the tools should be free:
That's where we do disagree. I don't expect to just wander down to B&Q
and help myself to an electric drill without paying for it. Why should I
or anyone else necessarily feel that a software tool should be free.
Just because there's nothing physical, it doesn't mean that it cost
nothing to produce or has no value.
> it's the labour that.to me, is valuable, almost beyond price.
Unless it's human labour expended making tools?
Then it has no value?
> The human
> input should rightly be valued - rather than the tools that do ( - or
> don't effectively do - ) the job they are developed for.
> Working in a software development house, I saw the human contribution
> costed into overall Project costs, then recoverable through a hardware
> implementation, powered by the associated software.
So here the buyer of the hardware pays.
> But the software
> was only ever regarded as a form of activation, of the far more
> important hardware being submitted, from proof-of-concept, to
> prototyping.
I use the exact same strategy myself, particularly where the hardware
is, if you like, the 'dongle'. I also make tools to make my own life
easier and I'm often happy to release those into the wild, gratis. But
again _I_ paid for those tools (by building them myself).
> This I consider a sounder basis for costing, pricing, &
> fundamental IT investment, overall.
That falls down somewhere when there's no hardware, though.
Several of my tools are the CAD packages that I use to design the
hardware. There's no hardware for the makers of those tools to recoup
their costs.
There is also a certain amount of "you get what you pay for", though
some of the 'free'(beer) stuff is fabulously good and some of the
paid-for is rubbish.
I'm a big proponent of OpenSource and try to use it most of the time,
and also encourage its use by others. But I also find there are times
when the management effort with some is just too great. I use a
commercial programming tool for embedded work, because I used to waste
so much time working out why changes broke my environment. I need to
earn a living and my time is better spent doing that that trying to find
out, e.g., why OpenOCD isn't working today.
> Dual-booting has been made more difficult than it inherently needs to
> be, through deliberate software development to inhibit that capability;
> accordingly, some hardware now needs a kind of team input, from more
> than one head, to get it going properly ..
I think maybe so. I think there's a good argument that they're
protecting people from accidentally installing malware, though I'm
unconvinced that argument stands up to any serious scrutiny.
Kind regards,
Gordon.
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