Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!think!husc6!cmcl2!sbcs!ameristar!rick
From: rick@ameristar (Rick Spanbauer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Does Shareware hurt professional software development?
Message-ID: <1990May26.223843.19350@ameristar>
Date: 26 May 90 22:38:43 GMT
References: <136211@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <1990May25.033040.12421@ameristar> <25291@netnews.upenn.edu>
Organization: Ameristar Technology, Inc
Lines: 42

In article <25291@netnews.upenn.edu> strasser@grasp.cis.upenn.edu.UUCP (Colin Strasser) writes:
>In article <1990May25.033040.12421@ameristar> rick@ameristar (Rick Spanbauer) writes:
>>In article <136211@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> cmcmanis@stpeter.Eng.Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) writes:
>>>because they are not comparable quality wise. However, who would
>>>buy Lattice or Manx if gcc and gdb were available for "free" and 
>>>ran in the same amount of memory, were equally well documented, 
>>
>>       ...   The Amiga market is fairly hard to turn a buck in no 
>>	matter what you're doing and people are just encouraged to take 
>>	their development cycles elsewhere when you make their that much 
>>	harder.  IMHO.
>
>Sanity check: if Gnu C for the Amiga were as good as Lattice or Manx, then 
>why not use it?  Simply because it's not commercial?  I mean, the way the

	In a word: support.  It is not in my interest to play Mr Compiler
	and fix bugs/find workarounds in language tools, unless they
	are my business.  It wastes cycles.  It is also much easier to
	ask Manx/Lattice for features I need rather than having to churn
	out code to add to Gcc, etc too.

>See Rick, what do you or I care if Lattice and Manx take their business else-
>where, if we have *as good a product* to replace theirs?  And if it's NOT as
>good a product (in enough people's eyes), then the point is moot - Lattice and
>Manx won't leave while they have a profitable market.
	
	The answer is volume.  Different people have different levels of
	expectations of their language environments.  If it is the case
	that the volume part of the C environment market is taken away
	by freeware (eg Dillons stuff, GCC, etc) then it affects people
	who may have higher expectations of support.

>Please, don't coddle corporations.  They really don't need it.
>				-Colin

	Anti business Colin?  Sell software/hardware in the Amiga market
	for a while...

>Colin Strasser				University of Pennsylvania

				Rick Spanbauer
				Ameristar