Response to Alan Holub's Last Column

[holub at violet.berkeley.edu]

This posting is my (Allen Holub's) response to Jon
Erickson's posting <4523 at ptsfa.PacBell.com>, put on
the net by John Girard. I'm not sure how long this debate
should continue, but I feel that Jon's posting was
misleading, and that several of his points need answering:

>> What you saw on Usenet was a version of [the original
>> editorial]...[It is] a scurrilous attack on me an the
>> magazine.

The editorial that was posted is exactly what Jon got, my
own additional comments are clearly labeled as such. You can
judge for yourself about its publishability, but I think
that something should have been printed--if not the
editorial that I wrote, at least an honest account of what
had happened. When Jon said that I could have the September
"Running Light" space, he essentially asked me to lie to
you--to talk about how great a time I had had with DDJ
(true) and how it was just time for me to move on to other
things (an outright lie, had I said it). This, after he
terminated the column without any reason given to me (this
article by Jon, posted to the net by someone else and not
directed to me personally, is the ONLY way that I found out
about Jon's reasons. He's still not given me a reason
directly). In any event, it seems by Jon's own admission,
that the editorial was largely to the point, not a
"scurrilous attack" as claimed. I might also add that scur-
rilous means "using or given to course language...containing
obscenities or coarse abuse... [Webster's New Collegiate:
1980]. The language in this editorial was strong, but it
wasn't scurrilous.

>> ...He wanted to sell the code through his own software
>> business...His column was becoming a free advertisement
>> for his business...I do not accept "free" articles from
>> individuals...associated with a company.

My company has one employee--me. It provided one service--
distributing code from an occasional C Chest. The programs
cost $20-$30. I've sold a total of 110 programs this year.
Get real Jon. I'm not Bill Gates.

>> Our payment varies from $500 to $1000 per article... Allen
>> was getting paid at the top of the scale.

I think, frankly, that this rate is scandalous exploitation.
Many of those $500 programs represent literally months of
work, and paying a programmer less than the minimum wage for
what is usually excellent work is inappropriate at best. The
renumeration is proportional to the space occupied in the
magazine by the final article, not the amount of work
involved. On the average, the C Chest took about two weeks
of solid work to produce. (That's just the article and code,
it doesn't count reading, learning how to use new compilers
and products, and so forth).  This breaks down to a gross of
about $12.50/hour. Since I'm self employed, though, a good
sized chunk of this goes to the IRS (I pay 14% for social
security right off the top). I also have to provide my own
office supplies, office furniture, medical insurance,
computers, and so forth. So in terms of real money, I'm able
to keep about half of that $12.50. In addition, about 4 days
of the two weeks left to me in the month are needed to do
accounting, office chores, answering letters, and other
things usually done by a secretary. This leaves 6 days per
month for doing consulting work, not much to take on any-
thing like a real project. Finally, bear in mind that since
C Chest was a monthly column, I couldn't spread that two
weeks of work over several months, as do most of DDJ's
authors. That is, I couldn't hold down a normal job and
write the C Chest too. Unlike most DDJ authors, I had to
live off of what DDJ payed me. My contract with DDJ was
written with all this in mind--it said that it was okay for
me to distribute occasional programs to make enough money to
live.

The other economic issue is that DDJ profits considerably
from an authors' work. People buy the magazine for the
articles, after all. Subscriptions are $20 times 50,000
readers. A full-page ad in DDJ costs about $3000.00 and
there are typically 90 pages of advertisements in the
magazine. You can do the rest of the math yourself. I think
that the percentage of this income that is paid to authors
accurately reflects DDJ's priorities.

>> Allen would not allow us to provide his source listings
>> free of charge.

Not true. The only time we discussed the issue, I told him
that most listings could be put onto CompuServe as usual (if
you can call the cost of downloading several hundred K of
code "free of charge"). Occasionally, however, when the
program was large enough to justify it, I wanted to dis-
tribute the code myself. As an alternative, I suggested that
DDJ could have all the code if it would pay me enough to
live. $1200/year doesn't even make the house payments, and
is well below a fresh-out-of-school starting salary for a
programmer. I guess, from his response, that this suggestion
was not acceptable.

At no point did Jon tell me that he would cancel the column
if I didn't give him the code for free. We only discussed
the matter once, and I was under the impression that we were
still discussing it when Jon cancelled the column.

Also, bear in mind the small sum I was asking for programs
(typically $20-$30) was often less than the download costs.
You got an executable version of the program, so didn't have
to worry about porting the code to your compiler. Also, the
programs often incorporated code from several C Chest
Columns. If you got it from me, you got all of it, rather
than the fragment that was actually published that month.
(All of this additional code was available on CompuServe, by
the way, but it was a pain to figure out what you needed and
download that too). Finally, nobody ever complained to me
about my distributing my own code, was Jon not giving me
your letters?

>> ...[We] would like to put him under a new contract...to
>> write feature articles and reviews.

That is, the same amount of work for less pay, and without
the guarantee of a regular monthly income. I'd be paid only
when feature articles were published, certainly not monthly.
Reviews take a tremendous amount of time to do (relative to
the final size of the article), and DDJ author payments are
based on the number of words actually published. The
"contract" was never discussed in any sort of serious way.
If Jon was really interested in keeping me on the staff,
surely he could have been less brutal in the way he canceled
the column, he could have given me his reasons for canceling
the column and let me respond to them, rather than forcing
me to discover these reasons indirectly through a network
posting several months later. He could have given me a copy
of the contract that he was proposing. In any event, the
issue of code distribution is not settled by this "new
contract."

  Allen Holub
  holub at violet.berkeley.edu
  ...!ucbvax!violet!holub