Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!agate!shelby!portia!zimm
From: zimm@portia.Stanford.EDU (Dylan Yolles)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Shareware Mac
Message-ID: <7008@portia.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 27 Nov 89 03:06:42 GMT
References: <641@nixpbe.UUCP> <1989Nov26.172437.10709@sun.soe.clarkson.edu> <6997@portia.Stanford.EDU> <5466@orca.WV.TEK.COM>
Sender: Dylan Yolles <zimm@Portia.stanford.edu>
Reply-To: zimm@portia.Stanford.EDU (Dylan Yolles)
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 38

In article <5466@orca.WV.TEK.COM> jeff@quark.WV.TEK.COM (Jeff Beadles) writes:
|In article <6997@portia.Stanford.EDU> zimm@portia.Stanford.EDU (Dylan Yolles)
| writes:
||- It would hurt the ST. David Small has done a great job with the Spectre,
||and sells it for a reasonable price. Quite frankly, I would like to
||seem him continue to develop fine ST products such as the '030 board
||some have been discussing. The creation of a free alternative to his
||Spectre would not encourage this. (Note, I am not connected with
||Gadgets By Small.)
|
|Wait-a-bloody-second-here...
|
|Does this mean that I should not go out and write a share-ware 
|<insert generic type of program here> because it might hurt
|<insert generic software house/publisher/author>'s business?
|
|I find it rather difficult to follow this "logic".  Insert "1-2-3" and "Lotus"
|in your paragraph for "Spectre" and "Gadgets by Small/David Small".  Would you
|be so sympathetic for someone else?

You should not go out and write a share-ware version of someone's
package IF you are *worried* about hurting their business. My point is that,
given the very small size of the ST market, we *should* be worried about
GBS's future. I'm not saying that it is morally wrong to write a shareware
Mac emulator; I'm just saying that writing it will hurt GBS, and given
the small size of GBS and the quality of their products, it is not in any
ST user's interests to hurt them.

By the way, the analogy to writing a shareware version of Lotus is not quite
applicable. Given the size of the IBM market, a shareware version of Lotus
isn't about to bankrupt anyone. Also, a shareware Mac emulator is likely
to be functionally very similar to the commercial product, whereas the
shareware Lotus is likely to be much worse. But whether or not what I
say in this paragraph is true or relevant, it does not take away from
my initial argument that we should all do our best to support GBS, because
GBS is important to the ST.

Dylan
zimm%portia@forsythe.stanford.edu