From ... From: Erik Naggum Subject: Re: Barriers to Lisp acceptance - a "survey" question Date: 1999/03/02 Message-ID: <3129402021067482@naggum.no>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 450520171 References: <7att2h$fpm$1@spitting-spider.aracnet.com> <7auptr$o7a$1@spitting-spider.aracnet.com> <920143667.2037628542@news.mindspring.com> <87ww12uqjh.fsf@2xtreme.net> <920305489.375875724@news.mindspring.com> mail-copies-to: never Organization: Naggum Software; +47 8800 8879; http://www.naggum.no Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp * Kent M Pitman | You cut out the part of my discussion where I mentioned if it's not free | it doesn't really address the issue. while I'm sure consumers want anything for free if they could get it, I'm a little concerned that people think there's business sense in providing all of these "necessities" for free. you could argue increased sales and make such freebies into marketing vehicles, but you really can't argue that it's part of the standard and that vendors have to provide it. in all this concern for user's needs, I frankly see much too little concern for whoever is _actually_ going to pay for them, given that the users are not even remotely interested in doing so. I'm probably among the old school of "free software" in that I respect that people will want to get paid for their efforts, that one has to expect to pay real money to develop software, and that it should cost money to have it supported, but that the _freedom_ of access to the source code should not therefore necessarily be reduced. I do not think the drive for "free as in gratis software" is healthy, and I actually think that the more people demand from the vendors without giving them any sort of incentive to do fulfill their demands, the less willing they will be in fulfilling them. catering to thankless, non-paying demanders is not good business. besides, it's not as if this is rocket science. if you want it for free, I say: drum up the people who are willing to do it for free, license it so people can actually use it, and _chip_in_, don't just _demand_ that others do stuff for you. programming is, after all, about bringing new stuff into existence that you see a need for. of course, I'm so happy that I don't _have_ to do a lot of work myself that I'm fully willing to pay for access to it. I guess this makes me a heretic, because the people I tell this to have these weird ideas that I'm opposed to free software and "summarize" my position as "make, buy, or shut up". apparently, the concept of creating something yourself to give it away is _completely_ foreign to these whining losers, and then I have even more reason to believe that they have no concept of how to make the vendors do what they think is a smart thing to do, namely create something they need and just give it to them. how hard _can_ it be to write, say, a de facto standard socket interface for Common Lisp and make implementations for all Common Lisps available to the Lisp community for free? those who want it the most sound like it's an insult _not_ to provide them with something that trivial. in brief: if you think free software is so great, make sure it wins by actually making the effort to make it available to everybody. meanwhile, I want to get paid well for my work. my give-it-away-to-thankless-losers time is history, but I'm sure there's business sense to _some_ people to do all this stuff for free or you wouldn't demand it of others, right? nobody can be so egoistic and self-centered as to completely ignore what it takes to create something they want, can they? BTW, I think free software is wonderful, as long as it doesn't mean that people demand to get what I'm doing for them without compensating me, and I cannot in good conscience demand anything like that from others, either. yeah, I'd love to get everything for free, too, like great food, a socket interface, great new hardware, CORBA support, fast Internet connectivity, and of course entire Common Lisp systems, but I'm a little more realistic than to expect to be able to _demand_ it. if somebody goes ahead and makes any of this stuff available for free, I'll be looking for attached strings and then I'll be happy if it's _actually_ free. in practice, however, nothing is ever truly devoid of costs, and I sometimes prefer to pay money and get off the hook. but that's just me, I guess. however, I seem to recall several important speeches on copyright issues for contributed stories to a "Lisp Lore Library" or something, and I fail to see how software doesn't incur the same conditions and concerns. #:Erik