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From: magnus@thep.lu.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: v08i116: ozshare1, shareware utils (part 01/10)
Message-ID: <9010161214.AA12776@thep.lu.se>
Date: 16 Oct 90 12:12:40 GMT
References: <4615@sage.cc.purdue.edu>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: Theoretical Physics, University of Lund, Sweden
Lines: 52

In article <4615@sage.cc.purdue.edu> bob@ecn.purdue.edu writes:
>Anyone out there objecting to the word "insane?"
>
>I download the alarm program before, and it said you had to pay $50 for
>company use.  So if these programs have the same "deal" you could pay
>well over five hundred dollars for them if you had a business and wanted
>to register them.
>
>If you by a utilites package, you get a nice package, full documentation,
>disks, etc.  Even using the verified price of "just" $250, this is crazy!
>
>The author seemed to not be fond of the idea of packaging these together.
>Maybe this is why.  Does he really expect people to pay these prices?

I used the word "grossly overpriced" in a recent posting. That's still my
opinion.

The sad thing is, the author obviously has no comprehension at all that
he's asking for too much, or why people don't like his doing this.
(I received a rather silly email message from him today which I find it
below my dignity to comment further upon, but which seems to indicate
this). 

I don't think we should ask the moderator not to publish things like
this - after all, if people think the programs are too expensive, they
won't pay for them (at least, that's the way the free market is supposed
to work).

But I think the moderator should keep certain standards (at least for
shareware - public domain is a different thing!), and if he finds
a program doesn't meet these standards, he shouldn't censor it, but at
least ask the author to reconsider the pricing, or to add some
documentation, or something like that. If the author persists, he could
perhaps publish it "under protest"...

Otherwise, the risk is that shareware in general, and cbip in
particular, will get a bad name if things like this become common -
users will say "No, I don't read cbip any more, there's just a lot of
bad programs at ridiculous prices". And that's not what we want, is it?


Magnus Olsson		     	| \e+ 	   /_	      
Dept. of Theoretical Physics 	|  \  Z	  / q	      
University of Lund, Sweden	|   >----<	      
Internet: magnus@thep.lu.se	|  /	  \===== g    
Bitnet: THEPMO@SELDC52 		| /e-	   \q	      


P.S. Having participated in some rather nasty flame wars on a local News
system here in Lund, I know how time-consuming and utterly unproductive
an activity flaming is. I do not want to start a flame war, but sometimes
one must state one's position, even at the risk of offending someone.