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From: jacob@latcs1.oz.au (Jacob L. Cybulski)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Re: HC 2.0 Situation
Message-ID: <8835@latcs1.oz.au>
Date: 26 Sep 90 03:51:29 GMT
References: <8096@milton.u.washington.edu>
Organization: Comp Sci, La Trobe Uni, Australia
Lines: 37

From article <8096@milton.u.washington.edu>, by burrows@milton.u.washington.edu (William Burrows):
> Have only one version of HC 2.0 that anyone could use to access,
> author, modify, etc. stacks.  Distribute this with all the
> hardware.
> 
> Claris could then sell an "Advanced Scritping Toolkit".  They
> could include XCMD, sample scripts, advanced documentation, etc.
> that would be helpful to the developer community.

I don't think this is legally acceptable, you'd always have ownership
problems.

Also I am not sure if distribution of HC with all hardware is either
necessary or cost effective. I have seen 100s of Mac users who simply find
no application for HC, the manuals shelved away and the software in boxes.
Who do you think pays for this - all of us. 

If it was necessary or profitable to bundle HC with all Apple hardware,
then I am sure Claris would jump on such a deal if only Apple decided to do
so, but then it would cost Apple heaps.

The pricing of Claris HC is another story. You would imagine that most
of the developers sooner or later make some money on the result of their
produce. So if the product costs $200-$400 it should not have a major impact
on the developer community (e.g. compare with Think C). The fact that HC
were a profitable product would allow Claris further expansions and
improvements, and if you look at their record so far, it is not that
bad (e.g. MacWrite and MacDraw).

As $200-$400 price tag may seem to be reasonable for commercial developers,
it may be quite a hike for students, I'd imagine some kind of educational
discounts and volume purchase license would be available. It is also
inconceivable to charge this amount to all the document readers, in such a
case a cheap (or free) version of HC (run-time only?) would be a very good
idea.

Jacob