Re: Richard Stallman is responsible for the shrinking economy


Chris H <chris@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
Well, this is a case where my personal opinion is that the software
*always* should be given away for free.

Why? Is software valueless?

No, because software has more value when used to leverage your core
product than when you try to sell it on its own. Companies don't sell
their marketing brochures, do they? They don't charge you to visit
their web site either. In this case, a company realizes that the
software is a tool that they're using to sell more core product, and
that their net profits are higher if they just give it away.

Car dealers don't sell gas, but they'll give you a free tank of gas
with a car purchase. Why? Because it sells more cars.

Then you get tools that are just good enough to give away free to get
the development started. You loose all the high quality tools and you
get the perception that Sw is valueless.

This depends on the vendor. In my case, the contracts often have
performance metrics in the deliverables that make the "free" tools of
comparable quality to the proprietary ones. Again, it depends on what
the vendor (customer) wants, and what value they see in it.

Also you only get the tools they want to supply. If their tools are
not very good you are stuck with them.

You get that with proprietary tools too. The difference is, if you're
"stuck" with free (as in speech) tools, you can at least do something
about it. With proprietary tools, you can't even fix the problem.

And IMHO proprietary tools can compete with free tools - look at IAR's
tools, which cover basically the same chips as GCC does. For a chip
vendor, more choice means more chip sales, so they encourage multiple
solutions (Renesas has at least three solutions for their chip
families).

If you are a SW developer your software is valueless and should be
free... and by implication you are valueless...

I don't see how you come to this conclusion. Just because you don't
understand where the value is in free software, doesn't make it
valueless.
.

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