Stephen J. Turnbull writes:
 > To the extent that handholding is used to finance development,
 > users of the software who also use handholding services are
 > subsidizing those who do not.  Since the price of handholding
 > includes overhead for development, some people with a value for
 > handholding between the cost of handholding (including providing
 > for the retirement of the handholding vendor but net of development
 > cost) and the full price (including the development overhead) get
 > shut out of the handholding market.  Bletch.

And yet how much difference is there between writing the software, and 
learning the software well enough to do hand-holding?

 > That is not to say that realized development will be the socially
 > optimal amount; it will not, not enough software will be produced.  It
 > seems highly unlikely that for all high-quality software the ancillary
 > services will be of the same order of magnitude of value as the
 > application itself.  There's going to be a need for direct grit-your-
 > teeth-and-ante-up[2] contributions to the development process (and
 > those contributions, of course, go indirectly into the pockets of the
 > free riders).

On the other hand, much proprietary software is copied, so this effect 
already happens, and nobody but the publisher grits their teeth about it.

-- 
-russ nelson <sig@russnelson.com>  http://russnelson.com
Crynwr sells support for free software  | PGPok | Government schools are so
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