Clarification on my call for license change

[David Elliott]

On 2002.02.16 18:58 Roger Fujii wrote:
[SNIP]
> don't know about that.  Considering their cost of goods conceptually is
> zero...  As for support, I don't see it ever being a panacea for the
> industry.  Various models for support have already been tried by
> commerical companies with varying levels of success.  However, there's
> a really bad side to this model, as it puts the economic incentive on
> generating support calls - which means that there is LESS incentive for
> fixing bugs (even in site support, you're less apt to buy it if the
> program is trouble free).
> 

Actually, there would be an economic incentive to NOT have support calls.  
Support calls cost money.  If people don't call you with support calls 
that are clearly your fault (i.e. a bug) then you make more money.  Of 
course you're right, there still is incentive to want people to at least 
pay for support which you can hope they'd be more willing to do if you 
give them some reason to do so.  Introducing bugs for this purpose would 
surely backfire as you'd get more calls than you could afford to pay for.

-Dave