[SunRescue] RE: Solaris 1.1 on a 4/330

[Dave Reader]

On Sun, 14 Jan 2001, Dan Lane wrote:

> Personally I have no problems with stealing software from companies, Its
> easier to download it from an ftp than go to the shop.. same reason I buy
> pizza online.

I'm not sure that that's a responsible attitude for someone who's already
under BSA investigation.

I tend to take the view that if the vendor gives something worthwhile in
return for what they charge, then it is fair and proper to pay. For
example, well written software, and responsive support for problems/fixes,
sensible upgrade policies (i dont want to pay for the software multiple
times at no, useful, additional benefit to myself). Of course, what you
can expect is to some degree proportional to what you pay.

The above would, in most cases, exclude any microsoft product simply
because their charges are nothing other than taxes - there is no support,
there is no responsibility taken by them whatsoever, there is no
service. there is engineered obsolescence to levy further M$ taxes, etc.

I try hard not to use microsoft products. The company i work for use
staroffice throughout, and the only M$ products are those which come
pre-installed with machines or which are dictated to be requirements by
customer demand. We do specify linux or no-OS on some machine orders to
help make the point.

I have a windows machine here which I haven't even booted for 4
months. All of the others are Linux/*BSD/SunOS/Solaris

I do copy software to play/try on occasion, but these are usually old
versions - and never for commercial gain.. anything which is used to a
profit must be paid for - afterall, that would be a beneficial use of that
vendor's product.

Another angle on this is purpose and use. If a vendor has a heavyweight
product for a particular purpose, valuable in that target industry, it is
right for that industry to pay for it - however it could be construed as
unreasonable for someone who is essentially a hobbyist taking an interest
to pay $k's to do nothing with it except satisfy their own intellectual
interests or other non-commercial activity (except perhaps competing with
a commercial company by offering the same services for nothing!).

Sun's freebie solaris licences seem to satisfy this - If I want a legit
copy of Solaris 8 to play with at home, I can have it. If I want to do
some serious work with it and turn a profit with by multi-cpu box of
tricks then I need to buy a license..

That's what seems reasonably fair to me - I know that others take very
different views, often quite strongly.

Software vendors need to get back to providing a service. For example, if
I buy a software package which suits my requirements perfectly, has a
small footprint, and runs under MyOS 1.1, I do not want to pay for it
again to get..

	a copy that runs on MyOS 1.2, 1.3, 2.0...
	a copy which has the bugs fixed
	an "upgrade" which adds nothing i need, and is bigger/slower, etc.
	the permission to run it for another 6 months

>From my limited perspective, vendors such as Sun make a reasonable job of
this - software purchased for SunOS 4 on a 4/330 ten years ago stands a
pretty good chance of running under Solaris on a modern machine. Solaris
itself will run on older hardware. Sun sets out their support policy
fairly clearly (we will support this hardware for X years..).

Whatever gripes you have against Sun, Microsoft do none of this. Money
given to them might as well be flushed down the toilet.

Of course, there are far deeper arguments possible along the lines of what
software is worth... for example, how many MS Office users would still use
the product if they had to pay for it? (i mean those that haven't paid for
it;) - is it worth the money that MS ask for it? .. sure, big companies
will pay 100's of $$ per machine for it, but will little 15yo jim down the
road? no.. he'll copy it or use something else. It simply isnt worth it -
and the big companies saren't necessarily buying it because it's /worth/
it either...

Many will pipe up with "well, if it isnt worth it, why isn't there a
popular competing product?" .. well, just look at all of that dodgy
product-tying, and proprietry file formats.... there's your answer. that's
(in part) what this whole anti-competitive thing is all about.

Interesting to note that at work, where one of the srevices we offer is
automated virus scanning of e-mail attachments, is the number of nasties
that float around in MS .doc files - and people still use them as
"portable" (ahem) documents... I get Word format files from sales people -
and that is just downright unprofessional IMO .. i shouldn't be needing to
use M$ products in order to buy hardware or services.

dave.