Would you pay for commercial software for Linux?

[David P. Schwartz]

"Free" (as in speech) software is what you get when you attach an antenna to your computer and stream the random set of bits that hit
the antenna into RAM as you sample the antenna periodically.  You want the bits organized???  Well, geez Louise!!!  What do you expect
for free?  Get your mama to organize the bits for you and stop complaining!

It's like standing in the middle of a crowded room and tuning in on whatever conversation floats towards your ears.  If you're standing
in a crowd of conservative bigots and you're a bleeding heart liberal, certainly you're "free" to "change the channel" by hopping into
your car or train or plane and changing your environment.  Can't afford to change environments?  Then it suddenly doesn't seem so "free"
any more.  Just ask any teenager who feels trapped by his/her parents' values/morals/ideals/rules/structure.  Sure, the parental unit
will gladly offer, "Hey kid, don't like it here?  Well, you're free to leave any time you want!"  It's "free", so go!  Yea, right.
Maybe the kids can trade their free software and free speech for free rent and free food?

Also, speech isn't necessarily "free" -- intelligible speech isn't, anyway (you DO like your words organized rather than randomly spat
out of a dictionary, don't you?).  When someone has something worth listening to, it's often the product of quite a bit of education
paid for in any number of ways.  Of course, there's also the old saying, "you get what you pay for", which goes for advice as well as
anything else.  So, if you aren't making a living from what you say, what does that say about the value of YOUR speech?  Some folks get
$50,000 stipends just to spend a few minutes blabbering in front of a crowd of people who are stupid enough to pay for that darned
"free" speech!  (Just ask Robert Kiyosaki who charges $50 for you to attend a two-hour live infomercial.)

Software that does something useful is not a random collection of bits.  It represents a well-ordered set of stuff that one or more
people spent time organizing.  It's typical of what our society calls an application of one's personal labor.  You get what you're
willing to pay for.

A lot of "free" software in America originates in research labs and government funded facilities.  A lot of "free" software available
here also originates overseas in countries that have a more socialist and even communist socio-economic  structure to them.  You might
ask yourself how you'd feel if you got laid off because your employer just lost another of a long string of contracts to another company
in a socialist country that was able to underbid you?  You should be HAPPY!  After all, it's almost FREE now!

"Commercial Linux software ventures" -- now THERE'S a TRUE oxymoron!  How could they possibly succeed when the entire user community
condems anybody who's trying to make a living in that market?

It'll be rather ironic when Congress passes a law forbidding Govt facilities from using any FOREIGN *nix software due to National
Security reasons -- and forces ALL agencies to immediately purchase SCADS of software from Microsoft simply because they're the ONLY
American software company left...

-David

Jiva DeVoe wrote:

> To settle a dispute with someone:
>
> Would you pay for commercial software for Linux?  Ie: Say, games,
> productivity applications, etc?
>
> If so, why does it seem that most linux commercial software ventures
> fail?
>
> (Distribution vendors are exempted from the above statement.)