[Hudlug] Elvis Costello! I spit on the floor!

[Chris Lindley]

On Wed, 2002-09-25 at 12:16, Chris Wood wrote:
> On Wednesday 25 September 2002 12:40 pm, you wrote:
> > To introduce a heretical thought, maybe programmers need to earn a living
> > as well as musicians ...
> >
> 
> Of course - everyone does. If you dislike paying a fortune for your CDs 
> either buy them online, or from that shop in Kingsgate...

Hmmm, which shop in Kingsgate?

I find the 2nd hand market on sat/tues pretty good. Although in this
situation the artist is recieving sweet FA from your purchase!

An analogy, or rather model, that I've never though about before is
comparing scientific research to software writing.  In most academic
research, a funding body funds your research, both you personally, and
research costs.  This research is then released into the public domain
as it's published in a peer-reviewed journal.  If you don't publish,
then you don't get future funding.  When you publish the results and
methods should be presented in a form that would allow another lab to
completely replicate the experiments and thus get the same results. 
Also your lab has got to freely supply (well, at cost) any specialist
materials that were constructed in the course of the research and that
are necessary to obtain the same results presented in the paper.  Fro
instance any genes that were cloned and are necessary to do the
experiments.

Of course this is academia and hence the money does come from goverment,
btu I wonder if this model could not be applied to some software
writing.  Although I'm sure it already does in universities.

 
> 
> Bet if you were a games programmer you wouldn't much like people ripping off 
> your games for their mates either.... Especially if your employer was 
> struggling to survive in the current climate.
> 

Look at Loki.  Sold/ported lots of Linux games.  All gone now!

It's funny, although when I used OS/2 as my main OS, I bought loads of
software.  I used to like the nice line it all made when stacked on a
shelf:-)  I don't think that I've ever bought a piece of Linux
software.  Perhaps it's to do with my lack of money at this time or
perhaps I can get anything I need as free software.

Cheers
Chris
-- 
  Chris Lindley                                  
  chris.lindley@scotgate.org          chrishl@bmb.leeds.ac.uk
  ICQ#157144010	    AIM#fergycool    jabber#fergy    IRC#Ferg
  Climb up it, kayak down it + make sure it runs on GNU/Linux