Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!ogicse!decwrl!decwrl!granite.pa.dec.com!mwm From: mwm@raven.pa.dec.com (Mike (Real Amigas have keyboard garages) Meyer) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Does Shareware hurt professional software development? Message-ID: Date: 29 May 90 19:19:31 GMT References: <1990May25.033040.12421@ameristar> <25291@netnews.upenn.edu> <1990May26.223843.19350@ameristar> <24937@usc.edu> Sender: news@decwrl.dec.com Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica Lines: 35 In-reply-to: papa@pollux.usc.edu's message of 27 May 90 08:07:31 GMT In article <24937@usc.edu> papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa) writes: The only two Shareware flukes (PC-File and PC-WRITE) have been in the PC Market in the mid-eighties and they've never been emulated since. People just don't want to pay for things they know they can "keep" for free. Actually, I ran across some other examples. Most were in the PC market, and they all had one thing in common: They didn't make money on "donations" for the software, they made money by selling some other service that went with the shareware. The best example is selling manuals - that's what PC-X did. That's also how Adam Osborne founded Osborne Computers - selling manuals for accounting software that he gave away. Of course, you have to have something for which the manual is actually usefull. Of course, you might not define such things as "shareware", but as something else instead. And that's where we get to what bothers me about shareware. It encourages people to not release source and add "send me $'s" messages to things like Leo's screen hacks (and those usually aren't as well done as Leo's stuff). They haven't contributed (even as commercial software) anything usefull to the community, they aren't going to make any money worth mentioning, but for that little they've wasted the time everyone who is doing usefull work that could be enhanced by that screen hack.