From: "Vladimir Galogaza" 
To: "ATM shore" 
Reply-To: "Vladimir Galogaza" 


Bill T,

>ATM is a hobby, and we ask a lot of those dedicated souls who have taken
>100's of hours (at least!) to write the programs we all can't live without,
>and 100's of more hours giving free technical support

>We happily pay $20 for a kilo of  pitch, why not at least that much for
>something we benefit from all the time?

Well said and very true.

There is another aspect which should be mentioned.

Complex and powerful ATM programs we happily use for free
 are often taken for granted as omnipotent and perfect. We tend
to neglect authors warnings about assumptions build into algorithms and 
resulting limitations. Sometimes those assumptions are not clearly stated.
Sometimes they are exposed in a highly professional language not
transparent to all users.
Sometimes they are absent. Authors, if available, are questioned by users
in some cases in such extent that they spend lot of their time to answer.
And users are often reluctant to ask because of luck of specific knowledge,
or they are hesitant to draw in the free time budget of their colleagues.
Many think that it will be easier for both sides to have access to detailed
explanation of the inner workings of the programs.  It does not has to be
source code. Mostly,  and most importantly, it is information about
underlying
mathematics in order to understand what is  realy going on at run time. In
such cases their intentions are honest, they are not robbers of
intellectual property.
And as Michael said they can be valuable debuggers, commentators, originators of
new ideas, improvers,  and yes " Pain in the A",  and all this
also for free
!

Vladimir.

--- BBBS/NT v4.00 MP