stripes@eng.umd.edu (Joshua Osborne) (07/09/90)
In article <9007061606.AA10534@lance> jimf@SABER.COM writes: [Two sets of warranties and tyranslations to english that say "the stuff on the disks should do what the stuff in the books says it does, if it doesn't the best you can get from us is what you payed for, even if the stuff on the disks destroys all sorts of things"] >These statements are very standard amongst commercial software. > >GNU has no warranty. They don't promise that their stuff does >anything in particular and if you loose something, they're not going >to pay for it. > >I don't see a whole lot of difference in their warranties except that >with GNU they won't repay your purchase price (which you didn't pay >anyway). Your only guarantee you have is that a for-profit company >probably won't stay in business long if their product doesn't work >(although there are obvious exceptions). Given the success to failure >rate in our business, this isn't saying much. "Real software" (stuff that you pay for) does come with more. It comes with a number to call for help. (in the PC world it also is less likely to have a virus, or be a Trojan house, but that's another matter) "Real software" also tends to be easyer to install, and tends not to need to be compiled for hours... Thes things give "real software" a edge in the "real world" (I guess that's why they are both described as "real") Now free software doesn't allways have to be at this disadvantage, that is if it becomes non-free. There are people who can provide the same (or better) support for free software as you get with "real software", the same people would probbly compile & install it for you. For a price (prob less then "real software" costs). (I know I could do this, now all I need is someone to pay me...) This doesn't belong in comp.windows.x anymore, so I'm redirecting follow-ups to gnu.misc.discuss. -- stripes@eng.umd.edu "Security for Unix is like Josh_Osborne@Real_World,The Mutitasking for MS-DOS" "The dyslexic porgramer" - Kevin Lockwood "Don't try to change C into some nice, safe, portable programming language with all sharp edges removed, pick another language." - John Limpert