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From: ake@dayton.saic.com (Earle Ake)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: I hate WinQVT, but I still can't find anything better.
Message-ID: <1991Jun3.140451.1651@dayton.saic.com>
Date: 3 Jun 91 18:04:50 GMT
References: <24425107@bfmny0.BFM.COM> <1991May31.205827.15299@ccad.uiowa.edu> <24425112@bfmny0.BFM.COM>
Organization: Science Applications Intl. Corp., Dayton, Ohio
Lines: 42

In article <24425112@bfmny0.BFM.COM>, tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) writes:
>>In business, customers generally include prospective customers.  The
>>prospects are EVERY bit as important as the licensed.  I hope ALL
>>software developers share this belief.
> 
> This is probably one of the ways where shareware has to be a little
> different.  In shareware, you have given away your product FIRST and
> must then cultivate actual *customers* after the fact.  Everyone is
> important, yes, but your obligation to support non-payers is minimal.
> Otherwise there would be no incentive to pay.

	The obligation to non-payers is minimal but if you expect to get more
shareware fees then at least tell the non-payers that the problems reported
have been fixed and distributed to the 'paying' customers.  If I find a
shareware product that works but needs bug fixes and the author has made little
to fix them, what is my incentive to register versus find another product which
might also do the job?

> I am sure shareware developers record ideas for improvements from everyone,
> paying and non-paying alike.  But *responsiveness*, in the sense of hand
> holding freeloaders who complain, is not a reasonable expectation.

	I tend to put bug fixes and new funtionality in two different categories.
There might be a bug that only a few sites can reproduce due to differences in
environment.  What if only the non-payers report the bug.  Will it be fixed?

> If registered WinQVT users get no response either, then there is grounds
> for legitimate complaint; but the above quoted posting gives no evidence
> about this one way or the other.

	If non-registered WinQVT users see no evidence that the author will
support the product after registration then there is no incentive to register
in the first place!


Earle
_____________________________________________________________________________
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Earle Ake   /___ /___/ / /     Science Applications International Corporation
           ____//   / / /__                 Dayton, Ohio
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