Mail clients in Linux

[Steven M. Scotten]

>>>>> "Steve" == Steve Lamb <morpheus@RPGLINK.COM> writes:

    Steve>     However the GPL doesn't allow for exhorbant amounts and
    Steve>     once the source
    Steve> is out, that is it.

I don't think the first is true. I'm almost positive that there's no
restriction, except that your second point is absolutely true and
would tend to keep the price down.

Besides, just because you provide the source doesn't mean you have to
provide binaries. Most people would pay for RPMs (for example) to
avoid having to compile the program themselves. If you don't believe
that, ask Red Hat.

    Steve>     But there are quite a few good reasons why it won't
    Steve>     sell *as well* as
    Steve> Souhtsoft wants.  I'll be the first to admit.  Of course,
    Steve> having immersed myself in the Debian distribution may have
    Steve> tainted my perspective of the matter.

Yeah, the Debian crowd is pretty hard-core anticommercial. Try asking
the Red Hat or SuSE crowd.

    >> You do Linux users around the world a disservice by painting
    >> them (us) as a bunch of skinflints who refuse to pay for
    >> products. And there are at least a hundred times as many Linux
    >> users as OS/2 users. (no I don't have numbers to back that up,
    >> but it's a conservative estimate IMO)

    Steve>     I hate to say it, but that really isn't that far off
    Steve>     the mark.  PMMail
    Steve> is one of the few programs I would pay for but only because
    Steve> there isn't something comparable on Linux...  *yet*.
    Steve> PMMail98, Quicken98....  Uhm...  Uhm....  and games (they
    Steve> don't count) are about all that is left that is proprietary
    Steve> even on my Windows box.

Do you ever pay for Open Source Software? I have a few times. Gladly
dropped $50 on Red Hat's dist even though I could download it for free
and try and figure out how to put it together. I'd say it's cheap at
twice the price. Lots of other people are *paying for* software even
though they could theoretically download and compile the same stuff
themselves.

It's simple. I bill my time out at $85/hour. If I have to dick around
for two hours trying to get something to compile on my system and
downloading the library versions I need and finding the right compiler
because this package won't work with that compiler or whatever, I'm
already wishing that I could have paid $50 or $100 for binaries and an
installer package. I can't bill that time out.

And most people, even most Linux users at the present time, don't have
the experience with such things than I do. I readily concede that many
have much more experience, including many of the people on this
list. I'm not trying to boast. Most users don't WANT to compile the
source code.

There's room in the world for all kinds of software, proprietary and
open.


Steve