Z:gnu-www-ja-shouldbefree--244781-A friend once told me of worki/en

A friend once told me of working as a programmer in a bank for about six months, writing a program similar to something that was commercially available. She believed that if she could have gotten source code for that commercially available program, it could easily have been adapted to their needs. The bank was willing to pay for this, but was not permitted to&mdash;the source code was a secret. So she had to do six months of make-work, work that counts in the GNP but was actually waste.