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From: barry@pico.math.ucla.edu (Barry Merriman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Novel Software Distribution Ideas
Message-ID: <1037@kaos.MATH.UCLA.EDU>
Date: 3 Feb 91 06:01:51 GMT
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Organization: UCLA Dept. of Math, UCLA Inst. for Fusion and Plasma Research
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There's finally lots of diverse, cool software out for the NeXT,
and more coming rapidly---that's great! (See the latest NeXTWorld, e.g.)

The problem is, we can only afford to buy a few pieces---those
most essential to our work, usually.

But I'd still like to have all the non-essential stuff, just to play
with, collect, and _just in case_ I ever need to design an airfoil :-)
And I'd like to pay for it, because I want to reward the creators,
as well as obey the law. Problem is, such stuff just isn't worth the _full_
price to me.

What I'd like to see is some way for software ``dabblers''  (as opposed
to heavy users) to get software at greatly reduced prices. The traditional
way is to pirate the software, but that has plenty of drawbacks.

Ideally, the price of software would be based on how much the 
buyer uses it. But such metering (a' la utility companies) 
would currently  be too much of a headache to the vendors and 
regular users.

So what we need is a system that approximates ``metered use'',
but requires little additional effort on the part of vendors 
and heavy users (otherwsie they'll just ignore us).

My suggestion:

Build the pre-set meter into the software---put
in a timer that prevents the app from launching after a certain 
number of hours used. For the full price you get infinite time on the meter,
and there could be a few other standard settings (just like parking meters)
that don't cost as much. For most apps in the NeXT universe, 20 hours
would be plenty of time. On the otherhand, serious users would need
an order of magnitude or two more. Reducing the price accordingly
would put the price in the $20--$40 dollar range, which is about
what I'm willing to pay for such things.

Also, this fits with the current NeXT community standard of
releasing crippled demo versions of software---except, instead
of crippling the printing, or deactivating after some date, they
could just release a fully functional version with five hours on the meter.


I'm sure progressive companies would do this _if_ it were 
trivial---this is where NeXT could help out, taking advantage of
their superior software platform. 
If NeXT created a ``meter object'' that
did all the metering tasks, and could be added to a code from
within the Interface Builder (just drag and drop a little parking meter 
icon), it would require no effort on the part of the vendors to add 
the metered feature. 

But, I'd like to hear other
alternatives---this is just the first that came to mind. 
There are probably hidden flaws I haven't considered (and some I am
aware of---a foolproof metering system may be impossible, unless the
meter can be made to respond appropriately to copying and multitasking.
But NeXT could perhaps put a few hooks in their OS to make it work).

In any case, being at the forefront and just starting up, 
we NeXT users have a golden chance to alter the way software is 
sold. If we can think up something economical, practical and
convenient, I bet we could bring it about. Ideas?





--
Barry Merriman
UCLA Dept. of Math
UCLA Inst. for Fusion and Plasma Research
barry@math.ucla.edu (Internet)