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From: blm@cxsea.UUCP (Brian Matthews)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,news.groups
Subject: Re: Change Of Life (really free upgrades on net)
Message-ID: <2319@cxsea.UUCP>
Date: 10 Jan 88 00:19:59 GMT
References: <3293@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> <6373@drutx.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: blm@cxsea.UUCP (Brian Matthews)
Organization: Computer X Inc.
Lines: 37

Clive Steward (clive@drutx.ATT.COM) writes:
|in article <3293@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>, saunders@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (kevin eric saunders) says:
|>     Which brings to mind, why in the name of the Net Gods is a for-profit
|> non-shareware software company (THINK) distributing software upgrades 
|> across UseNet?  
|> Irritated,
|> kev
|Is it possible you didn't notice that the upgrades were:
|    a)  free to all
|    b)  of interest to a very significant number of the community

Is it possible you didn't notice that the upgrades were:

    a)  NOT free to all.  Someone's paying phone bills, for disk space, CPU
	cycles, a maintenance person's time, etc.  Just because you don't have
	to send in a check doesn't mean that no one is paying for the
	distribution of the upgrades.

    b)  Of interest to a very INsignificant number of the USENET community.
	The last readership reports show that the readership of
	comp.binaries.mac is 4.9%.  Assuming even half of the Mac people own
	Lightspeed C, the upgrades are of value to only 2.5% of the Usenet
	community.  I wonder how many sites have the upgrades taking up disk
	space, connection time, and CPU cycles, when they are of absolutely no
	use to anyone at that site.  I know that's the case at my site.

Note that I'm not saying the upgrades shouldn't have been posted.  I'm just
saying that posting something isn't free, someone pays for it, and that with
so many Usenet reader's with so many varied interests, any one posting would
have to be pretty amazing to be of interest to 10% or more of the people
reading Usenet.

-- 
Brian L. Matthews                               "A power tool is not a toy.
...{mnetor,uw-beaver!ssc-vax}!cxsea!blm          Unix is a power tool."
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