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From: waltrip@capd.jhuapl.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Novel Software Distribution Ideas
Message-ID: <1991Feb6.103221.1@capd.jhuapl.edu>
Date: 6 Feb 91 15:32:21 GMT
References: <8847@hub.ucsb.edu> <1991Feb5.084512.26648@Neon.Stanford.EDU> <1045@kaos.MATH.UCLA.EDU> <1991Feb6.080837.26500@evax.arl.utexas.edu>
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In article <1991Feb6.080837.26500@evax.arl.utexas.edu>, 
herring@evax.arl.utexas.edu (Erick Herring) writes:
	[...lots of stuff deleted...]
> 
> Most of the companies writing software for the NeXT have no such
> safety net, and rely on the integrity of NeXT users and administrators
> to protect their (sometimes tenuous) hold on survival.  Be steadfast
> in protecting their interests, they are also your own.
> 
	This is precisely why I believe it is in NeXT's strongest possible
	interests to provide a means (if possible) by which software
	vendors may control the licensing of products by specific machine.  I
	don't suppose there is any foolproof mechanism for doing this but if
	NeXT could pull it off, they'd not only have ease of developing
	applications going for them, they'd have protection against piracy and
	flexibility of pricing.  That's most of a developer's dream (the rest
	of the dream being a huge, captive market:^)

	The difficulty of developing software is one of the major factors in
	software price inflation.  NeXT has addressed that perhaps better than
	any other computer vendor (that I know of).  But another one of the
	major factors (in some cases, more of a factor than cost of
	development) is software piracy.  So far, NeXT has not addressed this.
	Neither have they addressed what is certainly another major factor
	which Barry Merriman identified at the start of this thread:  the
	inability to fine tune pricing in accordance with usage.  His metering
	proposal addressed this cleverly.

	None of this is a criticism of NeXT--merely suggestions for attracting
	those developers and applications we all want (hopefully, at pricing
	we can afford).

	[...more stuff deleted...]

c.f.waltrip

Internet:  <waltrip@capsrv.jhuapl.edu>

Opinions expressed are my own.