Re: Protecting Software w/ Software License Keys...
Re: Protecting Software w/ Software License Keys...
- Subject: Re: Protecting Software w/ Software License Keys...
- From: Jeff LaMarche <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2002 00:27:43 -0700
On Saturday, June 15, 2002, at 11:46 PM, Jeffrey T. Hazelwood wrote:
>
The thing about good freeware is the part about making money, which is why
>
I don't like good freeware. (crappy freeware is ok because it doesn't hurt
>
anyone's bottom line)
Hmmm.. you don't like Apache? What about Darwin? GCC? Tomcat? XFree86? TheGimp?
NewsWatcher? Hell, without NewsWatcher, most of the classic Mac NNTP news
readers would never have followed. Most were built using some or all of its
code, likely all used it as a reference. These are all "good" free applications,
and yet the all have competition.
>
If you can write good shareware apps, you won't need to look for a job. You
>
could sit at home in your underwear and develop more apps and get paid to
>
do it.
Sure. And if you write good business software you can make much more writing
custom software. No specific job or lifestyle should be protected at the expense
of the community. I manage to eek out about 6-8 hours a week for my Mac programming
hobby (my work is all AIX, Solaris, and Win2k) thanks to work (10-12 hours
per day), commute (3 hours per day), and my family (4 little kids and a wife)
. If you can't do better sitting around in your underwear without a real job,
then you don't deserve to make a living at it.
>
Good freeware sucks because you kill the guy trying to make a buck. Look
>
what ms did to netscape with the free browser.
Excuse my language, but... bullshit. Microsoft has released free software
that they invested millions of dollars into simply to kill competition and
dominate a marketspace, which is obviously wrong. Never mind the fact that
Netscape was free also.
A lone developer releasing the product of a hobby as a free, open-source software
to the community at large is not a comparable situation to what Microsoft
does. First of all, the software becomes better and more secure because the
number of people who work on it increases. It gives new developers a real-living
codeline to look at and learn from, and gives the original author feedback
from others both more and less experienced about flaws in their program and
things that can be improved in it. There are many ways to make money writing
software, shareware is only one small part of the pie and there is a much
bigger picture than protecting the underwear-clad shareware author. If we,
as a community of developers, don't share what we learn and what we know,
then a lot of people end up spending a lot of time and money reinventing
the wheel. I supposed that's great if you're the one getting the money for
reinventing the wheel, but it's not a productive use of resources and a desire
to protect such inefficiencies can come only from a myopic view of what we
do and should be doing.
Collusion is no better than anti-competitive behavior. Telling me that open-sourcing
my code is a bad idea unless it's poorly written is inane.
>
I think small freeware apps that are useful, but people might not necessarily
>
pay for, are fine.
Fortunately, you are not yet King of the World. =)
>
But, why would you waste many hours of effort on something and then just
>
give it away? I don't understand why people do this. If no companies made
>
any money, no one would have jobs and their kids would starve.
Because I wouldn't have developed the skills I have without the willingness
of people who had been there before - without the open source that's out there
and the list and newsgroup members who answer questions without expectation
of compensation for doing so. The world of computing is too complex to have
to figure every task out from scratch. Sharing source code and applications
is imperative. You have undoubtedly been the beneficiary of a lot of people'
s willingness to share their expertise, knowledge, time, and code.
Additionally, most of the programmers in the world are NOT writing consumer
apps, and especially not shareware consumer apps. My most recent free, open-source
app allows the dynamnic creation of barcodes. There are countless contract
programmers who will be able to take that and incorporate it into what they
do, enhancing the value of their programs without having to figure out how
to do what I've already done. This helps them - they get to provide functionality
they wouldn't have been able to provide before, or at least wouldn't have
been able to provide as quickly. It helps their customers who get a way to
improve their business processes by automating them with optical scanning
and get a lot of "bang for the buck" when they decide to give the "add-on"
development work to implement the barcodes.. It's a whole "circle of life"
kind of thing, and fortunately there are many computing pioneers who are
not stingy with their code nor opposed to sharing what they've done without
having to extract a pound of flesh from everyone who comes near it. This sounds
like the classic Mac shareware programmer (though LemkeSoft and Ambrosia and
some others do not fit the mold).
>
Good freeware is like someone coming into your company one day with your
>
same skillset & talent and saying, "Hey, I'll take that guy's place and work
>
for free!"
If that guy can so easily be replaced, perhaps he shouldn't have been hired
in the first place. Frankly, if someone would hand my manager a completed
set of code for the project I'm currently working on, both she and I would
thank that person profusely. I wouldn't lose my job - I'd move on to one of
the way-too-many things that need to be coded or fixed and everyone would
be happy. Well, everyone except you who would be mad about someone giving
us free software, even though they were happy to give it, and we were happy
to get it.
It's actually even happened. Occasionally customers send us shelf-mods and
fixes they've done and sometimes they're good enough that we're able to incorporate
them into our codeline. It's not a common occurrence, but we're certainly
happy when it happens.
- Jeff
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