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From: oppenhei@umd5.umd.edu (Richard Oppenheimer)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: Windows-the interface that may never happen...
Message-ID: <6668@umd5.umd.edu>
Date: 14 Jun 90 02:54:38 GMT
References: <4ad6ea11.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM> <9814@sbcs.sunysb.edu> <3528@rex.cs.tulane.edu>
Reply-To: oppenhei@umd5.umd.edu (Richard Oppenheimer)
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Lines: 39

In article <3528@rex.cs.tulane.edu> doerschu@rex.cs.tulane.edu (David Doerschuk) writes:
>In article <9814@sbcs.sunysb.edu> altman@sbstaff2.cs.sunysb.edu (Jeff Altman) writes:
>>The cost of the Development kits also do not have a large impact on
>>the cost of the software purchase price.  Think about it, even if
>>a software company must invest $10,000 in development tools for
>>Windows this is far less than the cost of the people time to develop
>>an interface with similar capabilities.
>OK, valid point if you're talking about Ashton-Tate, Lotus, or even
>a middle-size company...but the shareware and PD folks provide
>a lot of the software for the PC, and the outlay of even just the $300-
>$400 for the libraries alone can be a moderately large expense.  Witness
>that almost no shareware/PD has been developed for Windows, which is
>what motivated this set of postings in the first place.

I think that this is a valid point for any software developer of any size.
Those software libraries were no afternoon picnic and Microsoft deserves
to be paid for the investment it spent developing them. I would much rather
pay $100 for the SDK, but lets be reasonable. I think the main reason there
is not AS MUCH (for there is some) PD and Shareware stuff out there is 
because of the shear complexity of development. Besides, for any of those
students and Academics that want to develop for Windows, there is an 
less costly alternative; Actor may be purchased at an Educational discount
of only $99. And Actor takes some of the complexity out of it to boot. But
it is still a large task.

Signature under construction

       ______
      /     |                   Richard Oppenheimer
      |     \/                  Computer Science Center
      |     Ri                  University of Maryland
    __|__          __           College Park, Maryland ,USA
    |   |  |______|| \          oppenhei@umd5.umd.edu (office)
    |   |   OO  OO--0-|         richard@wam.umd.edu (home)
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My employer cares not what I think and knows not what I say. The
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