"Don Y" wrote in message
...
On 10/5/2015 7:14 PM, Robert Green wrote:

The fact that Excel (unprotected) buried 123 tells us something about
people's tolerance for copy-protected software that could fail them at
the
worst time possible - after a network crash. We bought licenses for
every
seat but even so, we could NOT afford to spend the inordinate amount of
time
we did trying to restore 123 from a tape backup of the HD.

No, Excel buried Lotus because MS marketed/bundled it far more
aggressively.

Lotus had a well-established lead over MS and they blew it. I remember
those times quite well. The two largest PC user groups took up the cause
against copy protection. Then companies like mine scraped it off their
servers as soon as it became obvious how much more complicated "protected"
software made the restoration process. Our user group came to blows over
whether to call for a boycott of Lotus. As you can imagine, the user groups
had plenty of SW authors who believed in copy protection as well as plenty
of end users that didn't.

Why did MSWord bury WordPerfect?

Word Perfect was slow coming up with a Windows 9X version when the market
was moving like wildfire. In the world of keep or die WP chose death. Same
with WordStar.

If you could have a "free" car but had to spend an hour running around
pushing levers, adjusting settings, mixing fuel, etc. just to get
an hour's worth of use out of it, would you? Knowing that you'll
have to do the same thing *tomorrow* for an hour's use at that time?

Well, it's not really *that* bad using freeware. People also realized
that
the marginal cost to the manufacturer of SW box # 2 is very much not the
same as tangible property.

Should software vendor set price of each copy to recover his total
costs for developing said product? Offer a deep discount to buyer #2
and let first adopters pay for all the development??

I don't know how to counter the attitudes concerning IP. But I know that's
how people think, despite all the admonitions on every DVD we watch not to
engage in piracy.

I also have some issues with supporting companies like Disney who
managed to
change the copyright laws to their liking at the expense of the very
concept
of copyrighting. Mickey's copyright *should* have ended long ago but
Disney
*bought* Senator Hollings (aka Senator Disney) and he spearheaded
changing
the copyright laws to favor Disney and not the general public.

When Lexmark tried to use the DMCA to prevent people from refilling
printer
cartridges any sympathy I might have had for the big guys evaporated.

I interviewed with a company that sold "distilled water" prepackaged
for their instrument -- at prices that rivaled what you'd pay for a
vintage wine! How is a little bottle of water justified at an outrageous
price (to help defray development costs for the "toilet paper dispenser")
but software that tries to control *its* users is considered "outrageous"?

Outrageous is selling printer cartridges that could *easily* be opened and
refilled and using the non-reverse engineering clauses of the DCMA to
"brick" the cartridge once it's run out of ink.

Would you use a "free" cellphone (exclusively) if the chances of
getting
signal were 50% at any given time?

If the chances of freeware working were only 50% I'd agree with that
analogy, but it's not. It's more difficult to use, but not by that
large a
factor.

Maybe for "plain jane" applications (office/productivity suites).
But, have you compared the features and quality of those "modern"
FOSS offerings with *paid* offerings from 20 years past? Let
alone trying to factor in the effects that hardware advances
have GIFTED to the current FOSS offerings (try running some of
these programs on 20 year old hardware for a REAL eye opener!)

But the same can be said of commercial software. SW writers would be
foolish not to incorporate the latest hardware advances in their design.

How much time would you be willing to post comments on user forums
HOPING to find a GENUINE solution to the problem you are having
trying to get your FOSS spreadsheet program to calculate your
income tax bracket before you could file your tax return?

Probably as much as I might spend finding out how to do what I need to
do
with a paid software program. I got one of the new 50 dollar Kindle
Fire
tablets and the documentation is atrocious - and I own it fair and
square.
Paying for something is no guarantee of good (or any) support.

Because the market your fishing in has been driven by bottom feeders.

Amazon's actually pretty good at supporting their products. Apparently
they've got other issues, among them writing good documentation. Another is
not really knowing their market, i.e. their cell phone offering that dropped
like a stone.

No one *wants* to pay for support -- so what vendor would devote
resources *to* support? If you *charge* for support, then users
grumble. So, you set up a web portal and HOPE users can get enough
support from their peers that they will continue to use your product;
even if that means they only use a small fraction of what is possible!

I've gotten a lot better support from FOSS authors than I have from
commercial SW vendors. If you're talking to the original coder you're going
to get the inside track. If you call some big SW house you're getting a
foreign national who's reading from a script.

I was building 3D CAD models some 20+ years ago (AutoCAD v11 w/ AME).
I can recall having a problem with the package (some $3K as an *upgrade*)
and having a fix in my hands within days.

For every example like that I can find a dozen where end users were left
hanging with a promise that "we'll look into it in the NEXT version." Hell,
MS NEVER fixed a bug in Word that disables the cut and paste keys in the
file picker dialog. It's been in every version of Word since it came out.

We'll ignore the fact that there were no FOSS 3D CAD offerings "back
then".

It's a niche market and a very complicated one to serve. I wouldn't expect
FOSS developers to jump on that sort of SW until well after the big boys had
even defined the market.

If I had a similar problem with a FOSS product *today*, it would probably
be weeks for someone to "take an interest" in my particular problem,
devote some time researching it and then days or weeks for someone
to decide it was worth *fixing*!

That's not my experience. I got to know a lot of home automation software
AND hardware designers quite well and some of them would have a fix for a
problem I found within a day or so, particularly if it was something that
might effect a lot of users. Getting to talk an actual coder at MS is far
less likely. Infinitesimally less likely.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on *my* project. What do I tell *my*
client? "The FREE software that I'm using doesn't work correctly.
I'm hoping someone will step up and offer me a solution sometime soon.

If you picked the wrong tools for the job, that's on you. But a developer
that can cut costs by using FOSS *successfully* has serious advantage over
someone who pays 10 or 100 times as much for commercial software. Irfanview
has served my photo needs for quite some time. Hexedit, Winamp, DVD-Shrink,
VLC and lots of other FOSS programs have served me quite well over the
years. But when it came time to publish a newsletter professionally, I
turned to a very expensive (but industry standard) DTP package.

How many times will you tolerate downloading and installing updates
in the *hope* that something that you are having problems with gets
fixed?

That's MS, Apple and any company that has to publish updates. They've
all
failed at one time or another.

And the same is true of FOSS software. Download a newer version of
whatever
and you discover that a whole slew of dependencies get dragged into that
effort. Not that they *need* to be but no one has spent the time to make
the upgrade as painless as possible: "just grab it all" (and worry
about the changes/bugs that you've now inheritted, later!)

So if things are the same for FOSS and COTS how does that prove anything?

How much RISK do you run that those updates don't BREAK something
else?

The rule of computing for a very long time has been; "The Upgrade Giveth
and
the Upgrade Taketh Away." It's usually a crapshoot as to what comes and
what goes.

Of course! And the FOSS community is no better than the COTS vendors.

Agreed. So why bring it up as a liability for using FOSS when COTS suffers
the same problems? It proves nothing other than software has bugs that need
fixing.

"Update often" is a *mantra* of the FOSS community. A reflection that
there is very little formal testing going on -- no one's "business"
(reputation) is at stake.

Updating means they are responding to bugs that people find. That's a good
thing. How many times have security analysts had to go public with an
exploit they found in COTS SW because the vendor appeared unwilling to patch
it?

Or, change its behavior in a way that sends you scurrying back to
those same forums asking how you NOW perform the task that you
previously
KNEW how to perform?

Again, that's Windows, Apple and even Unix when a new version or a
bugfix is
required. Why did MS change "Find" to "Search?" Perhaps we'll never
know
but changing 'happy' to 'glad' just for the sake of changing something
has
been going on for a long time - way before the PC revolution.

But the FOSS world is just as guilty.

But it's SO MUCH CHEAPER! If I can produce a program to do X with fewer
costs than my competitor, I can make more money. That's a good thing. For
me, anyway.

No one takes ownership of a (FOSS) "product" and thinks about it
from the consumer's point of view.

Disagree, quite strongly. How does a COTS "team" take any better ownership
than a guy like Irfan whose name IS his products?

Instead, its wide-eyed "look at this neat feature I added!" ("Mommy,
I made a poops!")

Yeow, you really have a thing for FOSS writers that's pretty hostile. Some
of the best software I have ever seen came from 17 year old FOSS developers.

--
Bobby G.