From: bazyar@teal.csn.org (Jawaid Bazyar)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: Yet more software piracy
Date: 31 Jul 92 05:35:10 GMT
Organization: Colorado SuperNet, Inc.

toh@micor.ocunix.on.ca (Marc Sira) writes:

>There have never been Communists, Senator - only State-Monopoly-Capitalists.
>And those are currently a laughing-stock in Eastern Europe.
> 
>Is Richard Stallman the GNU guy? Isn't there a certain irony in your
>statement, then? B-)

  A small amount, I think :-)

>Jawaid, it seems to me that this is a tenet you've bought into without
>really thinking about it. How messy would it have to be before you'd decide
>that it _didn't_ work? How much ecological devestation, social inequity,
>and paradoxical lawmaking is worth it for a point of ideology? This part
>of the thread should probably die, I suppose...if you still believe this
>strongly in the muzzy ideas of one R. Reagan, you simply haven't thought
>about it enough (IMO), and I probably can't change your mind with any
>argument B-|.

  Whoa, I didn't say anything about Ronald Reagan.  Utopia is THAT --->
way; you're free to go for it.  However, the rest of us are content
to struggle it out in reality.  To be honest, human beings are selfish,
greedy, and the other guy will kill you if there's only enough food for 
you and the other guy.  Capitalism is simply a more honest way of looking
at people.  (Individuals may be nice, generous, helpful- but as a whole
we've been pegged since day 1).  Capitalism is the only system that's
been around since Western civilization began that's lasted the whole
time.
 
>Re: your other point about piracy "killing the IIGS" - you can't kill a
>tool. What has happened is that the mass preference has moved to another
>tool. Why has this happened? Apple isn't entirely guiltless - though to
>speak of "Apple" these days encompasses too much. The company has gotten
>a bit too large, and operates at cross-purposes in this area. But Apple's
>past decisions condemning the Apple ][ line were driven by capitalism
>(and greed & fear in the higher echelons). Is capitalism working for you,
>then? If you really believed in the big C to the degree you espouse, you'd
>be developing software for Windows - because that's what the system demands.
>That you're not doing so indicates to me that you're still saveable B-).

  Ahh, but the Windows/PC market is not all it's cracked up to be.
Extremely high competition, flaky computers, you're limited to 640K.
Basically, in almost every way, the IIgs is a better market than the MS-DOS
market (unless you're Microsoft or IBM).  There are one million IIgs
owners demanding software- I might be able to reach that many in the MS-DOS
platform, but what would I write that hasn't been written? There's lots
of room on the IIgs for improvement and new stuff.
 
>btw, _within the capitalist framework_, one of the major things that
>adversely affected ][ software development was probably AppleWorks. The
>only company that really managed to gain anything from that product was
>Beagle, and they did it in a rape-it-and-leave-it kind of way.
 

-- 
 Jawaid Bazyar              |   Ask me about the GNO Multitasking Environment
 Procyon, Inc.              |   for the Apple IIgs!   
 bazyar@cs.uiuc.edu         |   P.O Box 620334
 --Apple II Forever!--      |   Littleton, CO 80162-0334   (303) 933-4649
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2