From: stephen@estragon.uchicago.edu (Stephen P Spackman)
Newsgroups: comp.programming
Subject: Re: The new international trade agreement...
Date: 10 Apr 92 03:27:26 GMT
	<1992Apr3.051942.27151@bohra.cpg.oz.au>
	<1992Apr6.155111.28253@helios.physics.utoronto.ca>
	<STEPHEN.92Apr6193950@estragon.uchicago.edu>
	<1992Apr8.094828.15311@eua.ericsson.se>
Organization: University of Chicago CILS

In article <1992Apr8.094828.15311@eua.ericsson.se> euamts@eua.ericsson.se (Mats Henricson) writes:
|stephen@estragon.uchicago.edu (Stephen P Spackman) writes:
|>In article <1992Apr6.155111.28253@helios.physics.utoronto.ca> dooley@helios.physics.utoronto.ca (Kevin Dooley) writes:
|>|This is a good point, however it is still possible to earn money off of
|>|PD software.  How?  Look at Donald Knuth and TeX.  The software is completely
|>|free, but the program is so big and complex that you need a manual in order
|>|to use it.  So he has made a lot of money selling copies of his `official'
|>|TeXBook.  Then, of course, others came along to sell alternative manuals
|>|and documentation, but most people prefer to buy the original.  I have
|>|always liked this way of doing things because it has the great advantage
|>|that, even if there is commercial software to do the same thing, people
|>|will in general do the free thing.  It has the great disadvantage that it
|>|only really works for software which is of a certain threshold complexity
|>|(otherwise people won't buy your manuals).  Also timing of the release of
|>|your manual and the release of the software is critical.  You don't want
|>|anybody else beating you to the punch with a better manual and you don't
|>|want to try to publish too soon or no publisher will take it.  Also it has
|>|the problem that you have to be able to write well, which is not always
|>|the programmer's strong suit.  Anyway, it *can* be done.
|
|>You notice that this only works because TeX is a really BAD programme
|>and you NEED a dozen chapters on how to hack it to make it useful! Now
|>tell me how someone with a sense of design elegance and social
|>responsability, using decent language design and modern UI technology,
|>can make a living writing free software?
|
|I cannot understand the problem! If all possible software was written,
|and all of it was free for anyone to use, THEN we couldn't make a living
|since all of it was done. But this will never be the case. There will
|always be unwritten software, and companies need to have it written,
|so they will hire us nerds to do it for them.

But (1) if we charge them for it, is it free? And (2) do we want to
live in a world where all the software that is written is written by
people who are hired by suit-sorts to write to braindead
"specifications" that are based on market studies and not designs?

If it's possible to make a living by writing software that was
designed for purposes OTHER than to get management off your back, then
the pool of competent software will be larger, not smaller. And that's
the quandry.

Like it or not, a compiler that comes from a professional at a
compiler company is going to be better than one that comes from
someone - even someone competent - working in what spare time they can
pull together at a car plant.

Best of all would be if competent programmers would work on their own
designs, non-commercially, on state funding: administratively this is
an art rather than a craft because of its ease of distribution. I
*want* to be "unemployed" so I can do my *work*. But that's not the
right kind of thing to think in America, I think.
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stephen p spackman         Center for Information and Language Studies
stephen@estragon.uchicago.edu                    University of Chicago
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