From: jamiller@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.datacomm
Subject: Re: NComm 2.0 at last! pirate trash NOT!
Date: 6 Apr 92 23:37:28 CDT
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

>                  /* deleted*/
>   I'd be selling software to the same people who are buying it now,
> pirates don't buy software.  Pardon me if I'm mistaken about that
> conclusion.
> 

I guess I have an overly rousy picture of the Amiga Community.
Perhaps though with the severely depressed economic times we are
experiencing people's buying (and pirating) habits are changing.
Maybe it is this factor and not the perceived influx of ex- 64 & Atari
users which is really at work.

> 
>   No, I earned my education via trading six years of my life in the Navy,
> the first two years of which were in trade school drawing the princely
> sum of about $150 a month.  Granted, I didn't have a tuition and boarding
> hanging over my head, but I couldn't just up and leave at anytime I pleased.
> A couple of 4-6 month tours at sea in the Indian Ocean is not exactly a
> joyride either.
> 

Again it is unfortunate that many people due to the inability to
provide for their monetary needs are forced to join the military as a
last result depriving the private sector of their expertice and
denying some person more commited to a military carreer an
opportunity, but still my experience is that the military does provide
for a student quite adequately for the related services accrued.
Again the point is you didn't have to pay for school while in school
and had a job with excellent benfits when you weren't in school (vote
democrat for president) taking a big load off you.

>   Get a clue, or at least read some of my posts more than three words into
> the beginning.  I'm well aware of the fact that piracy exists on every
> platform.  What I'm saying and you can't seem, or don't want to grasp is
> that the installed base of Amigas can't tolerate the levels of piracy that
> the C64 or DOS machines can and have.
> 

I didn't mean to imply you were unaware of the wide existence of
pirating but to emphasize that it does exist and that its existence
reflects something significant.

>   Why don't you wake up and take a clue from all those how-to manuals on the
> bookshelves at B. Daltons.  It's a perfect example that there is a
>good market in reaching those people who don't buy the programs that they use.
> 
>   -jack-

Someone is making money off those manuals right?  Stallman in the GNU
Manefesto makes the arguement that in a free software enviornment
programmers would freely distribute source as well as binaries and
would (if necessary) find profit in market that would demand Hand
holding support, manuals, etc.  The argument seems very attractive.
There would always be a need regardless where it is supplied for
software.  Whether profit is accrued from a consumer base or from
hardware manufactures or from individuals or firms is immaterial.
Someone has to pay to get the job done.  Isn't it fairer that the
company making the money off the software not the consumer bear the
financial burden for its creation?

jamiller@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
james miller

~jack this is not a flame, I did take offense at the typtification of
~owners of low end machines as _pirate trash_.  I sympathize with your
~position, but the stock answers are not prepared for the next
~centuries questions, and if we leave it to the powerful to answer
~these questions look what they did to TV and RADIO.