I pay for what I like

I dont have a lot of time to put into this topic, but I do have a few ethings to say.

I am a big fan of shareware. That is, try it and if you like it, then buy it. I do this for all software I work with -- games, spreadsheets, etc. I think Perlmonks is the best way for me to get help about Perl and thus am willing to pay money. But note well, when I pay money I have expectations about what I get. In some cases, it's a warranty, In other cases, a support contract, in other cases, I have "stock" in the company. vroom has made it clear that this is his site, meaning he sees it as something that he maintains final word on at alltimes. Thus with that privilege, comes the responsibility of keeping it going, all by himself if need be. I would be happy to pay for disk space, bandwidth, or whatever. But it is reasonable and common to expect something in return.
sorry to hear about vroom being laid off. I guess he finished school in Michigan didn't he?
We need to be able to vote on a priority list to set vroom's marching orders. Excuse me? Have we hired vroom? Are we paying his bills? Not the last that I looked!

Again, the issue of paying for control of a person is coming up. mirod's retort contained this same sentiment. Other CPAN authors, ERYQ, jean-louis leroy and others seem to think that their role in the freeware community is limited because no-one is paying them.

But many others work tirelessly for free and don't get into hot and testy battles with those expecting service from them.

so, we can see Perlmonks as a big contribution to the perl community just like DBI or CGI or Perl itself. And with that comes (usually) free support channels, good documentaiton and some degree of democracy and some means of submitting suggestions and patches to the system.

This isn't all my thoughts on this issue but I do wish vroom were a bit more vocal about that status of perlmonks and whether it stands a chance of collapsing. And just how much control of the site he would give up so that others can help keep it going. Ie, someone buy a DSL line, someone but disk space, etc.

Comment on I pay for what I like

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Re: I pay for what I like by mirod (Canon) on Aug 18, 2001 at 02:20 UTC
This is quite interesting princepawn, and it explains some of your previous posts. The basic problem is that you think in terms of shareware/freeware, while I, as most (all?) of the authors on CPAN belong to the Open Source community. When you grab a module from CPAN you don't get the right to annoy the author or to ask them for support. You get the source. You can use the software if you like it, or read it for educational purposes or modify it if you find a bug or improve it or do whatever you want with it. But it comes with zero rights to support. Now granted most of the author, including me and I'd be willing to bet ERYQ and Jean-Louis Leroy, do support their modules. If you ask nicely and dont act nasty we are more than happy to help you or anybody else, answer questions, add features, apply patches... But we do all that out of pure good will, because we enjoy it. So the minute you start acting like a jerk and start demanding things and complaining about the lack of support, the whole thing is not that fun anymore, and we might well tell you to go back to buying shareware and not being able to patch the darn thing when it doesn't work properly. As for PerlMonks and Vroom being in control... Vroom has done a terrific job at creating this community and at maintaining the site and adding features. It works fairly well and suggested improvements are quite minor. So I think he's shown that he can be trusted, we all enjoy the site, why on Earth would we want to make his life less enjoyable? Let him go on running the site and let's try to provide him with the means to keep on doing it. I am quite sure he does a better job than I would do, so why would I want a piece of power here besides posting rights?	[reply]
Re: I pay for what I like by Tuna (Friar) on Aug 18, 2001 at 07:35 UTC
But note well, when I pay money I have expectations about what I get. In some cases, it's a warranty, In other cases, a support contract, in other cases, I have "stock" in the company. vroom has made it clear that this is his site, meaning he sees it as something that he maintains final word on at alltimes. Thus with that privilege, comes the responsibility of keeping it going, all by himself if need be. I would be happy to pay for disk space, bandwidth, or whatever. But it is reasonable and common to expect something in return. Ok, wait a minute. What exactly do you mean by reasonable and common to expect something in return? How about vroom sends you a big fscking bill for the knowledge and resources you have obtained here? Now granted, you have also been a contributor here, but the concept of "giving back what was so freely given to me" does extend beyond sharing your knowledge and expertise with others. Hey, if you don't/can't contribute $$$ to the site, great. But please don't propagate the idea that one should receive something more tangible (for lack of a better term) for their contribution here. As for my harsh tone, it is derived from the many hours and resources I have devoted to helping battered women and their children, so naturally, donations with any expectation attached to it is a sore spot with me.	[reply]