this was my post regarding Kent's post a while back
http://technicaldebt.com/archives/2009_06.html#000879

jon
blog: http://technicaldebt.wetpaint.com
twitter: http://twitter.com/JonKernPA



D. André Dhondt said the following on 7/9/09 8:53 AM:
>
>
> Hey all, do you think I'm making an overly strong statement in the
> following? How could I refine this vision? Or how do you see things?
>
> ________snippet from
>
http://dhondtsayitsagile.blogspot.com/2009/07/software-has-no-intrinsic-value.ht\
ml
>
<http://dhondtsayitsagile.blogspot.com/2009/07/software-has-no-intrinsic-value.h\
tml>
> _____________
>
> After Kent Beck's musings
> <http://www.threeriversinstitute.org/blog/?p=268> on how to find
> paying customers for his work on JUnitMax, and on capital efficiency,
> I started wondering, well, if we won't buy from Beck, who will we buy
> from? Maybe no one--in fact, recently, I've stopped buying software.
> It comes embedded in the gadgets I buy, or it comes OEM with my new
> PC, or is available on a free CD that accompanied a gadget I just paid
> for. Even with all this "free" software, the first thing I do with a
> new toy is try to make it work with my computer without installing any
> of the bundled software at all... and speaking of minimizing my need
> for software--the first thing I do with a new PC is uninstall as much
> as I can get away with. Why do I uninstall? To me, each unused
> application is waste, risk, in short, rubbish--so I clean up
> aggressively. It's not that I don't have any software at all. Every
> once in a while I do need software that wasn't given to me, so I'll
> evaluate a few freebies online, and ultimately choose some product
> that does the job well enough.
>
> Note the change in focus here--I'm talking about getting a job done.
> There's no intrinsic value in the software itself--but there is
> potential to accomplish a task, and therein lies its value. Yet it's
> rare that my needs correspond exactly with the software's behavior. So
> if it doesn't do exactly what I need, and there's a free one that is
> just about as inadequate, why not go for the free option?
>
> I'm not alone. The prevalence of free web software (from list serves
> to social networking to banking), plus the thousands of open and
> closed source software products that are available free download,
> suggest that there may not be much time left for people that are still
> trying to sell their software.
>
> Now for the irony--I've been paid for years as a 'software developer'
> for in-house applications, and there are lots of other workers getting
> paid to contribute to free software. Where's the money coming from?
> Where's the value? As I've already said, it's not the software. The
> value comes from getting the job done better. The less software
> involved, the better (per James Shore's spag
> <http://jamesshore.com/Blog/An-Approximate-Measure-of-Technical-Debt.html>
> code debt model). I think, then, my job isn't to write software. My
> job is to solve business problems... to figure out what the business
> really needs, to deliver value, with as little technology/effort as
> possible.
>
>
> --
> D. André Dhondt
>
>