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From: jimomura@lsuc.on.ca (Jim Omura)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Publishers (Good shareware is bad shareware)
Message-ID: <1991May17.041556.12165@lsuc.on.ca>
Date: 17 May 91 04:15:56 GMT
References: <1991May11.211802.22320@wam.umd.edu> <1325@zinn.MV.COM> <1991May14.124316.29136@lsuc.on.ca> <1991May15.144206.14581@wam.umd.edu>
Organization: Consultant, Toronto
Lines: 84

In article <1991May15.144206.14581@wam.umd.edu> dmb@wam.umd.edu (David M. Baggett) writes:
>In article <1991May14.124316.29136@lsuc.on.ca> jimomura@lsuc.on.ca (Jim Omura) writes:

...

>I imagine most shareware authors don't realize how they may be
>affecting the commerical market.  If they did, they might go to the
>trouble of selling their software.

     As I've noted before at time, it seems to me that *most*
shareware authors aren't thinking much about what they are doing
at all, let alone how it affects the commercial market.  I've
found that in a large number of cases people put on restrictions,
Copyright notices, money begs, and such just because they see
other people doing it.  You wouldn't believe how many times
I asked people why they put a Copyright notice on something and
the answer was something like "isn't that what you're supposed
to do?"  When I asked what they meant by "supposed to," I got
the equivalent of a blank stare.

>>     What's interesting is that there are so many people who are
>>"new" to the Net that this whole argument seems to be new to a lot
>>of people.  This is one of the oldest historical arguments on the Net.
>>It may surprise many here, but there has *always* been a disagreement
>>with posting of binary files, for example, if you don't post the
>>source code.  Why?  Well, you are *supposed* to share your material
>>with the widest possible number of people on the Net.  Posting a
>>binary which can't be ported to other machines was (and in many peoples
>>opinion still is) a violation of Nettiquette.  And "those people"
>>are for the most part the very people who were the main builders
>>of the Net.  What do you think "those people" think when they see
>>a file that is Binary, Copyrighted, and *demands* money?
>
>One crucial point you're missing about the current situation in
>comp.sys.atari.st is that almost everything is "posted" via FTP now.  I
>haven't posted anything to comp.binaries for ages.  So no one can say
>that it's costing anyone anything to maintin my shareware files, except
>for the generous folks at atari.archive who have made it clear that they
>don't mind.
>
>FTP is very different from "the Net" -- do you have the same feelings
>about things "posted" via FTP?

     Well, teh question is, having read my reasons, and added your
own, and those of other people, what do *you* feel about it?  I'm
getting the impression that you think that I had very heavy feelings
about the matter.  If you still have my original message lying around
I think you'll find it interesting to read it again.  I never said
that this was an all-consuming-passionate-belief-in-the-core-of-my-soul.
But since you ask, I'll lay out the 2 points and apply them:

1.  As far as objections to Shareware based on its distribution
    on the Internet is concerned, no, of course direct FTP doesn't
violate the principles of Nettiquette.  That's always been clear,
and I specifically noted that in the case of CIS, it had nothing
to do with it being commercial.  You're simply not using the Net
when you call a site directly.  I can't make that point any clearer.

2.  Shareware still does add to the problem of causing confusion
    to end users and of course BBS operators and just about everybody
else who comes into contact with them.  That confusion hurts in
a couple of way.  One way is that it makes people stop caring
about the differences between all the different variations and
they find it easier to violate notices -- easier for them to
ignore their consciences and become pirates.  Also it makes it
easier to violate Copyrights even when people are still being
consciencious because they sometimes don't understand or don't
remember that a specific restriction was on a particular piece
of software.

     Whew.  Umm.  In all this discussion on those points, nobody
has mentioned any of the current magazines for the ST in North
America.  Aside from Explorer, and the "fanzine" thingy (I can't
remember the name -- it's the one that's just a bunch of reprints
of club newsletters), are there any others?
>
>Dave Baggett
>dmb%wam.umd.edu@uunet.uu.net


-- 
Jim Omura, 2A King George's Drive, Toronto, (416) 652-3880
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