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From: saunders@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Kevin Saunders)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Shareware:  think of it as wasting your time
Message-ID: <1990Nov16.162407.13925@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Date: 16 Nov 90 16:24:07 GMT
References: <1009@toaster.SFSU.EDU> <1990Nov9.210806.11591@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> <1010@toaster.SFSU.EDU>
Organization: Cornell Theory Center
Lines: 77

In article <1010@toaster.SFSU.EDU> eps@cs.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) writes:
>responding to the article in which I wrote:
>>                                I never broadcast a truly debugged
>>version (except to those who sent the $25)
>
>You're not alone at this.  If I pick up an early, buggy shareware
>release, odds are I'm going to erase it soon after.  I'm not going
          ^^^^^^^^
>to send you $25 because you might be "hoarding" a working copy.  
                             ^^^^^
   Thanks a lot for the gratuitous insult; you're a real credit to the
net.  I wasn't hoarding squat; the bugs were pretty minor, not
fatal, which is pretty good for fairly early Macintosh software.
Plenty of commercial Mac software has nastier bugs.  Next time
EMAIL BEFORE YOU FLAME because you MAY BE MISTAKEN.  The few who
had sent me money DESERVED the debugged version; I didn't think
anybody else did; I decided I'd better focus on work which pays,
ugly though that may be.

   "Oh, the wicked author of shareware, what an *unscrupulous*
character--trying to trick me into paying for this buggy software!
Why, this character actually distributed it across the globe, free of
protection schemes, free for me to examine, and judge for *myself*
whether the software is functional.  But I have found--my God, I must
cross myself a few more times--this software has bugs!  There are
features that don't quite work right!  What a *scoundrel*!  I'll keep
this, I'll use it, but I WON'T PAY!"

   Fundamentally, I agree with RMS on this issue:  software is a free
good (which doesn't mean it's not valuable--try breathing the air
sometime!--but you'll have one hell of a time trying to *charge* people
for it).  To use microeconomic jargon, the marginal cost of the next
copy of a piece of software approaches zero, since the very nature of
the computer medium is to make duplication cheap.  Software theft is
pandemic, and will stay that way even if the government declares a War
On Theft (clearly too unoriginal a concept for our government to consider).

   The way to make money from software is to provide little online help
and make it more difficult to use than it needs to be--like, say,
MicroSoft Word--so users have to buy a manual (from *you*)--or to get
such a broad distribution through bundling it (the Osborne/NeXT
approach, practiced on the original Mac but abandoned at the behest of
MicroSludge, whoops, MicroSoft) that a million tiny royalty
payments will add up to something substantial.

   As I said, it became *very* clear from net discussion of the
profitability of shareware that almost *no* users would actually pay
for it, debugged or not.  That's why there are *no* major shareware 
packages.  You yourself have apparently just confessed
that you don't pay for *all* the shareware you keep, because the
programmer "might" be hoarding a better version.

   As I said, shareware doesn't work as a concept because 
so many people feel entitled, one way or another, to use it without
paying for it.  

   *Including you,* if I read you post correctly.

   I won't post any more on this topic, which doesn't exactly belong in
comp.sys.next.  I hope EPS will restrain himself from flaming those who
reveal an inordinate faith in human nature and distribute software in
the form of shareware.  EPS is a real altruist for distributing his
swiftly completed software freely; he is mistaken in believing that
this qualifies him to dump on others who are perhaps not as
well-situated employment-wise and would like some bread to feed their
family in return for their efforts.

   Human nature sucks.  Let's start another war over our disagreements
about what exactly is wrong with it!

   Sincerely,
   kevin

-- 

Kevin Eric Saunders
   cqu@cornellc.cit.cornell.edu