Trumpet Winsock Creator Made Little Money 358
omast writes "It appears that Peter Tattam, creator of Trumpet Winsock, got very little for this piece of software. For those of you who do not remember — or did not need it because were already outside the MS Windows world — Trumpet Winsock was a shareware program that provided TCP/IP functionality to Windows machines back in 1994-1995. It allowed millions to connect to the Internet back then; I was one of them. According to the article, Tattam made very little money from the program as it was widely distributed but rarely paid for."
I'm sure he did fine... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I remember! And I never paid either... (Score:2, Interesting)
It's the problem with the redistributed freeware model. While everyone is working their 9 to 5 jobs and using the software the guys spending their time writing it aren't making a living. Once they repost the software the chain is broken and the poor writer goes unpaid. Years ago I had this happen with Winzip where I actually paid for it but it wasn't the original writer selling it so he got stiffed. I got more careful after that episode.
Re:I feel kinda bad for him but, ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Trumpet was a great solution for tinkerers and enabled many of us to get on the "net". Not sure why you have to crap on it so bad however I feel bad for anyone that had to support anything on win31.
He got the internet in return... (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems like a more than fair deal. :-)
Or at least, that's what my wife and I like to tell ourselves about our GPL'd garden simulator (a six person-year labor of love around the same time period):
http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/ [gardenwithinsight.com]
There have always been four different economies throughout human history:
* A subsistence economy ("There's some lovely berries over here.");
* A gift economy ("The meat from this deer is going to spoil; let's share it with the tribe.");
* A planned economy ("Let's put the longhouse here.");
* An exchange economy ("You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.");
Their relative balance shifts with changes to culture, technology, and other circumstances.
See also the comment I made here:
http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Economic_Transformation [peswiki.com]
So, we can expect the balance between those four economies to change as our technology and society changes, perhaps with:
* A subsistence economy through 3D printing and local PV solar panels or other clean energy technologies (like cold fusion or something else);
* A gift economy through the internet, like sharing digital files to use with our 3D printers;
* A planned economy on a variety of scales, including through taxes, subsidies and regulation affecting market dynamics; and
* An exchange economy marketplace softened by a basic income.
Re:Felt bad until I read this..... (Score:5, Interesting)