Xref: utzoo comp.sys.amiga.tech:7783 comp.sys.amiga:42284
Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!POSTGRES.BERKELEY.EDU!dillon
From: dillon@POSTGRES.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech,comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Should I go commercial?
Message-ID: <8910240722.AA22726@postgres.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 24 Oct 89 07:22:25 GMT
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Lines: 109


	Should I go shareware with some of my better programs?  That is,
    request $$ ?  I was thinking of this:

	DME		$10
	DCron		$10
	DNet		$10
	DMouse		$10

	Is that too little?  Probably :-) .  Once you 'buy' the program
    updates would be free.  It wouldn't retroactive for the large number
    of people and friends who already use these programs, but there
    would be an obligation to pay once when they get their next update.

	As I said, updates would be free, but the user will need a
    modem.  I would commit time to make the programs spiffy.

	I will be setting up a simplistic BBS on my Amiga from which 
    people will be able to dial up and retrieve the latest of these
    programs.  I can't commit HD space for a general upload/download
    area because I can't afford too much connect-time bandwidth to
    build up if it becomes too popular :-).  The BBS will be 
    auto-newuser and based on private mail boxes (i.e. no chat yet).
    If I can manage to get a local UUCP feed, users would have access
    to the USENET for private mail (but not news).

	The reason being that I would like to reserve most of the time
    for UUCP dialups, and a busy BBS precludes being able to use the
    machine for any real work.  My Amiga is now on full time 100% and
    has a dedicated dialup number that isn't even connected to a phone!
    I'll announce that once I get my BBS up.

	Speaking of which, I am now running UUCP.  Anybody else who
    runs UUCP and wants me to setup a UUCP login for them on my
    machine (overload) is welcome to email me!  I am based in 
    Berkeley California.  I might even be able to manage a news
    feed but that is WAYYYY in the future.  You would have to call
    me but would be able to do so almost any time of the day... the
    worst that would happen is that you would get a busy signal or
    ring ring ring forever if the machine is down.

	I have also written a couple of new programs.  One especially,
    Getty, is really awesome.  It sits on the serial.device (you can
    run a getty for each of your serial ports) and waits for incomming
    calls.  It is completely passive to any program that uses SERF_SHARED.
    It deals with connecting, Login:, Password:, and runs an arbitrary
    program specified from a Passwd file.

        I have hacked UUCICO (UUCP) To be runnable from the password file
    which makes the whole implementation very, very clean, because you
    no longer need to leave UUCICO running waiting for connections and
    taking up room and stealing the serial.device ... and with Getty,
    one can setup his machine to handle different kinds of dialups...
    i.e. one login would run your BBS while another would run UUCICO
    for a UUCP transaction, while another would do something else, etc...

	The Getty takes all the work out of writing a serial port
    interaction program in that it deals with accepting the calls,
    the CONNECT message, getting the baud rate right, etc...  and
    it deals with the disconnect sequence after the program it runs
    exits.

	The Getty provides a central point from which many programs
    can be selected by a person dialing up (provided he knows the login
    and (optional) password).  The catch is that it really needs some
    backing to get people to take the extra 10 minutes and fix up
    their serial.port interaction programs to be compatible with Getty
    (This involves interpreting a few options on the command line...
    The getty passes the name of the serial.device and unit to the
    programs it runs for complete generality), and ripping out any
    already existing code to deal with connecting and disconnecting,

    	Terminal emulators should always open the serial.device
    SERF_SHARED (This is *really* easy to do !!) to be compatible with
    Getty.  The idea is that Getty would be run for each serial port
    you've got connected to a modem from your startup sequence and
    remain resident forever.

    It *REALLY* brings out the machine's communication capabilities.

    My problem is that I would like Getty to become at the minimum,
    Shareware, which precludes making it part of the UUCP distribution
    unless I can convince all the people holding copyrights on the UUCP
    code (William Loftus, Dan Schein mainly) to make UUCP shareware as
    well.  I've put in maybe 60 hours of work into W.L's 0.40 release
    and it's really hot, and I really want to reach some sort of
    compromise so I can make the stuff available to people.

    ----

    Lastly, I have written a UUSER: device which works like AUX: but is
    really meant for programs run from Getty.... It allows you to write
    very general programs that use stdin and stdout to talk to the
    serial port in a relatively clean fashion instead of having to 
    write complicated serial.device routines, which is what most people
    do now.  This is what my BBS will use to communicate.  Since stdio
    is used the BBS could be run from a CLI just as easily as from the
    Getty.

    I would like to make Getty and UUSER: shareware ($10), and Licensable
    for people to include in their own distributions at a reasonable
    figure, say $2/copy of your software package that you distribute.
    (The idea here being that I can make this part of the UUCP
    distribution... I have to talk to William Loftus on that).

	So, what do you all think?  This message is being cross posted
    to BIX too, by the way.

					-Matt