[OT] Article on Shareware Professionalism

[Rob Cozens]

>Those of you using Rev to develop products may appreciate this excellent
>article I stumbled across the other day:
>
>Shareware Amateurs vs. Shareware Professionals
><http://www.dexterity.com/articles/shareware-amateurs-vs-shareware-professio
>nals.htm>

Thanks, Richard.

The article contains lots of good advice for those who include making 
a profit as a major goal.  Try as I might, I cannot.

I think the article should be retitled "Shareware artists vs 
shareware professionals."  It is, to me, a question of the primacy of 
software development as an expression of creativity or a job. 
(Although I don't see secrecy and lack of sharing as an artistic 
trait, but directly related to profit motives.)

I have a job: customizing FlexWare accounting systems.  OenoLog is my 
statement to the world as one with nearly 30 years in the business as 
to what I think 21st century business applications should look like. 
If the wine making world agrees, I stand to make a comfortable 
profit; if it doesn't, I have still have had the opportunity to 
indulge my creative muses.

Can you imagine an art teacher telling students they should paint 
what the public wants and spend as much time selling their work as 
they do creating it?

BTW, in today's economic society a certain level of profit motive is 
understandable.  I'm not knocking it, if manifested in moderation: I 
just can't enjoy programming done for profit to someone else's 
specifications nearly as much as seeing my mental design concepts 
manifested on the computer.

Cheers!
-- 

Rob Cozens
CCW, Serendipity Software Company
http://www.oenolog.com/who.htm

"And I, which was two fooles, do so grow three;
Who are a little wise, the best fooles bee."

from "The Triple Foole" by John Donne (1572-1631)