Re: [Pan-users] Re: OT: freedomware vs... Was: Building Pan on Windows?

[Paul Crawford (at UoD)]

> car or give it away you would be breaking the law. Copy protection,
> while it is almost universally disliked, is simply a means of enforcing
> the license agreement. My system does not lock the program to a specific
> computer and it is for life. I do not charge for updates. IMHO charging
> between 60% and 100% of the package price for updates is wrong. Let me

That sounds a fair deal to me. I have paid for software under similar 
terms and am happy with it (e.g. vuescan, autopano, 5spice to name a few 
off the top of my head).

> item and sell it yourself without paying any royalties? Why should
> software be any different? Should we simply scrap all copyright and
> patent laws because they are not 'ethically legitimate'?

I have no problem with copyright for software, but I do for patents:

In practice, patents are often vague and it is essentially impossible 
for most, if not all, companies to know that in a 30k line program they 
are not somewhere violating one of the 7M+ patents out there.

Furthermore, I have a problem with the time period - 20 years validity 
was fine in the Victorian era where product life cycles were measured in 
decades, but not now when 5 years is several cycles of most products.

> As a closed source software vendor it is in my interest to keep my
> customers as happy as possible. My sales rely on my good reputation.
> That means I have to fix bugs quickly and add new features as they are

Oh, if only Microsoft & Adobe were like you!

> requested. Open source authors don't have that impetus. I use both
> Windows and Linux. My Windows installations mostly work. If I try a
> piece of software and it doesn't work I don't buy it. Now take my home

This actually raises a good point about closed/licensed software: can 
you try it first?

The ones I have bought are generally ones that had a trial option so I 
could find out if it worked for me, and so paying for the full version 
was not a difficult decision.

It still does not address the issues of:

(1) Trust, as an inspection of what is happening is not possible, but 
where the software is quarantined from internet access that is less of a 
problem.

(2) Interoperability, can you import/export data correctly from any 
propitiatory formats?

> computer running Kubuntu 9.10. A lot of the applications that come with
> it have annoying bugs or in several cases complete show stoppers. KDE
> bombs on a regular basis. Ark us unusable. Archive mounter doesn't. It

I have little problem with the Gnome version bombing, maybe its a video 
driver issue?

> contribute towards several OS packages. When I first started looking for
> a good binary newsreader I found Pan suited me best of all the free and
> commercial packages I tried. I am not saying Windows is perfect either.
> For instance I know of at least one way to crash Windows Explorer on XP.

There are lots of bugs/irritations in windows as well, some are only 
apparent when you use it for prolonged periods (e.g. getting slower with 
time, applications failing to un-install cleanly, etc)

> I do not personally agree with Microsoft's business methods and IMHO
> Windows had been steadily going downhill since W2K. There are plenty of
> software vendors out there who do push the limits of what is acceptable
> but I am afraid the same can be said for any market.

Sadly true in my opinion.

For most work I used Ubuntu desktop and run a VMware image of w2k (or my 
work XP machine) for things that Linux won't do/do well enough. I would 
suggest it as the best general solution to the problems of security and 
application support. So long as you don't play fancy Windows games of 
course...