Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!yale!husc6!cmcl2!sbcs!ameristar!rick
From: rick@ameristar (Rick Spanbauer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Does Shareware hurt professional software development?
Message-ID: <1990May27.140850.20700@ameristar>
Date: 27 May 90 14:08:50 GMT
References: <25291@netnews.upenn.edu> <1990May26.223843.19350@ameristar> <24937@usc.edu>
Organization: Ameristar Technology, Inc
Lines: 62

In article <24937@usc.edu> papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa) writes:
>
>I have to say that on this one I personally don't see it the same way as Rick,
>though I can understand his arguments.

	Reasonable people can disagree :-)

>Take for example emacs and C on UNIX. FSF had GCC and Gnu-C++ running on
>practically every platform.  Not only that, these compilers have been rated 
>BETTER than the other major C compilers by both the leading UNIX magazines
>(UNIX World and UNIX Review).  Has this hurt the "commercials"? You bet.
>What other side effect did it have?  That the commercials are continuously
>improving their products to match GCC features.  Of course these companies
>provide support, and that is what a given type of customers require.

	I did a port of GCC for the R2000.  GCC is probably the nicest
	compiler I've ever had the pleasure to work with, no doubt
	about it.  And I'm sure it has made GreenHills, Metaware, etc
	a lot more responsible about cleaning up their code generators,
	adding ANSI support, etc.  

>Similarly have shareware and freeware sales of Amiga comm programs impacted
>A-Talk III sales? They have somewhat, but we've been hard at work at always
>being one step ahead (first with a tek emulator, first with Zmodem support,
>first with multi-serial, etc..). That is, users have benefitted from the
>competition between commercial and freeware/shareware, since we have had to
>continuously update the program with new features.  I doubt I would have
>continued to do that if the rest of the software competition was lousy.

	You have to ask yourself the other question: what if ATalk-III
	sales were great?  In other words you had enough money to work
	on Amiga software fulltime rather than out of the dorm room?  Chances
	are that you probably would have made quite a few of the competition
	induced changes, along with other software packages for the machine.  
	It seems many developers (myself included) are parttime with 
	aspirations to go it fulltime, were there only the sales to support 
	such effort.  I have to admire the chutzpah of the people who really 
	do this fulltime (and have staked all their livelihood on the Amiga) - 
	it must be one hell of a rollercoaster ride.  It would be interesting
	if someone conducted a survey of Amiga companies on several datapoints:
	fulltime/parttime status, revenues, time invested, etc and compared
	the results with similar studies from other markets.

>In terms of sales though, freeware/shareware has not really impacted us
>as much as low-priced commercial software such as Baud Bandit. And it
>doesn't matter that Baud Bandit has a horrid manual. It is still
>commercial software that is on dealer's shelves, unlike freeware/shareware.
>We found from interwiews that most people that use freeware/shareware wouldn't
>have considered buying a commercial product anyway. On the other hand, there 
>are a lot of people that wouldn't consider using software that doesn't come in
>a package with a manual and a "promise" of support.

	One difference is that Atalk is Amiga market only.  Both Manx and 
	Lattice have a presence in (several) other markets.  What I am worried 
	about is that they could, in the face of a good GCC/G++ port, stop Amiga
	development.  After all, why input all the work required to match GCC 
	code generation (especially if the work isn't portable to their other 
	platforms) if there will not be adequate return on investment?

>-- Marco

				Rick