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From: gardner@prls.UUCP (Robert Gardner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Shareware (was Red Ryder)
Message-ID: <7082@prls.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 30-Oct-87 15:08:29 EST
Article-I.D.: prls.7082
Posted: Fri Oct 30 15:08:29 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 4-Nov-87 23:03:44 EST
References: <377UD069225@NDSUVM1> <172@ut-emx.UUCP>
Reply-To: gardner@prls.UUCP (Robert Gardner)
Organization: Philips Research Labs, Sunnyvale, California
Lines: 44

In article <4909@oberon.USC.EDU> kurtzman@pollux.usc.edu (Stephen Kurtzman) writes:
>Let's face it. A lot of shareware is garbage. Red Ryder may be an exception,
>but I doubt it. I have seen many postings on the net and BBS's that enumerate
>the bugs to be found.
>
This posting is not intended to offend shareware providers...

I think a lot of people who provide shareware post their stuff in an
incomplete stage thinking that if interest warrants (i.e. enough
dollars come in) then they will finish the product, support it, re-
release it, etc. However, I get the feeling that most shareware USERS
refuse to pay for incomplete, buggy software. So they don't pay, the
provider doesn't think it's worth his/her time to polish the product,
and shareware gets a bad reputation, both from the provider's and the
user's standpoint.

I once heard a successful developer (I believe it was Chris Crawford)
comment that it's the final 10% of polishing that makes the difference
between a fun, usable program (he was talking about game software) and
a flop. I think that what makes commercial software seem so much better
is just that final 10% of effort and beta testing that shareware
rarely gets because people don't want to pay for incomplete, buggy software.
It's a vicious cycle and I'm not sure how to break it. Ideally, you
would think that shareware would be a great place to beta test and polish
a product, if only you got the impression that it would pay off. It takes
a lot of time and effort to polish a product and I don't think people
want to (or should be expected to) do it without promise of pay-off.
If anyone has any ideas on how to make it work, please share them! Some
of the most interesting to me are providing source code or more features
to those who register. But this still assumes that your initial posting
is reasonably polished and bug-free!

On a somewhat related not, I think the amount of money asked can be
important, but perhaps differently than people might think. I get annoyed
at shareware that asks me to send "what I think it's worth" or similar
and I also don't like ones that ask for $5 or less! (Maybe even $10 or
less.) Why? Because it hardly seems to be worth it to go to the effort
of making out a check, sending it in the mail, etc. just to give someone
enough money to go to a movie. It also makes you wonder what kind of
an opinion the author has of their software and what the chances are
that they'll really do anything else with it. Is this a strange attitude?
Are marketing practises also a concern in shareware?

Robert Gardner