Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!emory!gatech!ncsuvx!mcnc!rti!bcw From: bcw@rti.rti.org (Bruce Wright) Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms Subject: Re: Windows installation disk compression? Summary: Shareware and the bottom line Message-ID: <1991Feb8.041654.16071@rti.rti.org> Date: 8 Feb 91 04:16:54 GMT References: <12281.27a9a905@ecs.umass.edu> <1991Feb7.192957.7986@sunee.waterloo.edu> Organization: Research Triangle Institute, RTP, NC Lines: 92 In article <1991Feb7.192957.7986@sunee.waterloo.edu>, gpsteffl@sunee.waterloo.edu (Glenn Patrick Steffler) writes: > In article waynet@wiffle.techbook.com (Wayne Tilton) writes: > > ...good explanation of expand deleted for brevity... > >>*To any Microsoft people out there: In future programs, how about using > >>a standard compression format like .zip or .arc, which would give better > >>compression and avoid problems like mine :-) > > > >Why would they want to do that? They might have to pay ANOTHER COMPANY > >for using the compression/decompression programs and it might _seriously_ > >affect thier bottom line ;-) > > If one co-op student can do it for less money, and the same compression, why > not?? What the hell is wrong with that? Gads! Can't fathom the idea? > Well, I suppose it might look cheap, but let he who hast not picked a > quarter from the street cast the first flame. :-) A couple of points about this issue of using .ZIP or .ARC -format files for distributing software: 1) If you distribute just the archive, then the end-user will have to get a copy of PKZIP/PKUNZIP or ARC or one of the other utilities that understand these formats. It's no big deal for people that dial in to a lot of bbs's or who swap a lot of public domain or shareware software (those utilities are pretty universal in that user community), but it's important to realize that the entire microcomputer community isn't like that. Some users don't get things from bbs's at all. Some even have a _policy_ never to use such things - too much of a chance of a virus or a trojan horse. It might be a minor inconvenience for the typical hobbiest or incidental user to deal with a virus, but it could be a major problem in many business environments. Imagine the chagrin of a customer in such a situation finding that the company has to track down a copy of such an archive program in order to install a new piece of software!!! 2) If you distribute both the archive _and_ the unpacking software, you will in all probability have to pay a licensing fee to the company that makes the unpacking software. I don't know what licensing fee would be for such an arrangement (PKZIP asks for a contribution of $25, but presumably in a mass distribution such as described a lower license fee could be negotiated), but you can bet that the author is going to ask for something significantly > $0. If the product is relatively inexpensive, this is going to affect its profit- ability substantially. I don't know exactly what Microsoft sells Windows for (obviously the price they charge to the distributors is a huge discount off the list price), or exactly what their costs are (remember you have to pay for development, support and marketing costs as well as the simple production costs, so their costs must be substantial). I would imagine that their profit margin on Windows itself is paper- thin: it just doesn't sell for all that much. A game can be sold for a lot less with a pretty high profit because it requires less development and support; something as complex as Windows is naturally going to have more overhead. Adding even a small licensing fee to each copy for an archive program is going to add to the overhead and eat into that margin. (NB: This doesn't mean that they don't make a ton of money selling just Windows, never mind the add-ons like WFW and Excel. But when you're talking millions of copies, even a thin margin can add up pretty fast). To me it makes perfect business sense that Microsoft would "roll their own" - either by developing it in-house or by contracting another company to build something like EXPAND. I sort of doubt that they would be able to negotiate a much better deal from the archival software people - after all, that might cut into the archival software market: if a company already has, for example, a PKZIP license from the Windows distribution I doubt they'd be falling over themselves to register it again. So the archival software companies aren't going to want to let a license like that go for a trivial amount of $; since they have a pretty nice niche going already, why screw it up? It would make a BIG difference if the product were expensive and were being marketed by a small company - then there might be a significant advantage to paying the licensing fees (if only a few expensive copies are sold, the licensing fees may well be less than the cost of developing the compression software). I'll agree that in some abstract sense it would be "nice" if everyone could agree on a single compaction format. But unless it gets provided with the operating system I doubt it will happen - there are too many market forces pulling in other directions. Microsoft in the MS-DOS marketplace is hardly the only example of this kind of thing. It's called capitalism. Bruce C. Wright