My mental jury never seems to reach a verdict on that score, it usually depends on what he is saying and whether it pushes one of my buttons. This week he did, if only because he struck me as only using examples that suited the judgement he chose to render.
Of course, this is only my opinion. You might like to form your own and while you're at it you might like to ponder what tone he was intending to set by using this opening statement.
"Stuff worth having isn't free. I fly first class. I spent more for a Jag."
My immediate response to that? Depends on what "stuff" you're talking about. I don't fly any class now, I can't cope with the insides of airports any more. I come from where Jags. are built... what's your point?
I don't disagree with a lot he says... you get what you pay for in most cases. Where this principle applies to a far lesser extent is with free software and it surprised me to say the least that he makes no mention of freeware whatsoever. Then again, this wouldn't have supported the statement he was making.
It goes without saying that I'm going to take issue with the picture he's painting because by excluding the enormous impact of freeware on the computing and Internet landscape he's distorting reality... big time.
Many motives are at work with free programs and there is much similarity with the purposes being served. Large software companies make use of them as loss leaders to attract us to their product lines and this serves promotion and marketing purposes as well.
Individual programmers are very often applying the same principle in terms of creating examples (or even bodies of work) of their skills to supplement résumés.
In my experience however the overwhelming majority of freeware is produced by people, for the fun of it, for the satisfaction it gives them and for the pleasure of putting out there a creation of theirs that gets to be used by a lot of other people.
So many of these people tell me this and it's another variation on the theme of "fifteen minutes of fame."
The freeware waters are becoming a lot more muddy with the likes of Adware and Spyware but even with "warts and all" there will always be far more gems than duds and I have no fears whatsoever over the future of this type of software.
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