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From: dillon@CORY.BERKELEY.EDU.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Shareware ideas
Message-ID: <8704290513.AA28799@cory.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Wed, 29-Apr-87 01:13:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: cory.8704290513.AA28799
Posted: Wed Apr 29 01:13:16 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 30-Apr-87 05:55:21 EDT
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	I dunno.  Shareware is a great concept, but as you noted there is not
much incentive for people to pay up.  This may be due to a basic problem in
the shareware idiom... the idea that a person who sends in money gets
'special treatment'... better docs, more support, etc....  That's all fine and
dandy, but has a major flaw.

	Does this mean the author is only going to post one version, get his
clientele, and never post updates to a BBS again?  probably not.  And a
certain amount of documentation would have to be posted to the BBS to make
the program initially appealing.  Purposefully Posting incomplete docs
would simply anger many people.   Sure there are lots of things you could
offer to people who register by mail with $$, but it ultimately means leaving
something out of the original posting.

	And I personally like to post revisions as soon as I make them...
and post as complete a manual as I can.  The programs I write I write for
several reasons:	(1) I need to use them myself, (2) I *love* to 
write neato programs, and (3) It gives me great pleasure to know that there are
many people out using my programs and learning from them.

	Since I can't offer any 'special treatment', I don't try.  If you want
to send me $$, that's fine with me.  If not, I won't hold it against you.  
Unfortunetly, being a programmer, I must take an impartial stand on the
ethics of 'users' paying up (personally, I figure that since I'm posting useful
programs to the net I don't have to (generally speaking), pay for the 
designated shareware stuff I'm using because many of those authors are using
my stuff.  The Reverse Applies too, of course).  

	There are some things out on various BBS's designated
'shareware' that are a joke... too simplistic to *really* be worth sending
$$ to the author for.  I seem to remember somebody designating a simple 
colored lines demo as shareware and asking for $15... give me a break!

	And then, I like to think that the stuff I and many other people
are doing (Steve Drew, Dave Wecker, Perry, and Mike Meyer to name a few),
are forcing commercial software companies to put out decent stuff in light
of their PD,SW,and FW competition.



						-Matt