Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: ShareWare blues
Message-ID: <10805@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 23 Aug 89 16:01:50 GMT
References: <794@madnix.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 22

In article <794@madnix.UUCP> jason@madnix.UUCP (Jason Blochowiak) writes:
>	Speaking of public reaction to my stuff - how many people out there
>that write ShareWare get paid for it? I've gotten $4 for my animated watch
>(which is FreeWare, so I was somewhat suprised to get anything for it), ...

I thought it was pretty cute, but I didn't continue using it; others may
have had the same reaction, so even if it had been marked as "shareware"
you may not have drawn many "customers".  It doesn't surprise me that
someone thought a cute idea deserved some small reward, though.

On the low rate of return from shareware, I haven't heard of anybody
getting rich through shareware.  A couple of the most famous and useful
programs may have paid off, but most users probably don't feel that the
shareware author expects to have his appeal for reimbursement taken
seriously.  The best success along these lines appears to come from
those products that are useful enough to draw "customers", but are
missing things (such as source code, support, or certain subfunctions)
which are documented as being supplied upon payment of the shareware fee.

Then there's always the Xenocide author's approach, namely to release
nifty free software that contains embedded exhortations to buy his big
commercial product in order to pay for further development of freebies.