Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!coplex!jim
From: jim@coplex.UUCP (Jim Sewell)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: Posting shareware to the Usenet
Message-ID: <273@coplex.UUCP>
Date: 8 Jan 88 01:22:19 GMT
References: <38093@sun.uucp>
Organization: Copper Electronics,  Louisville, Ky.
Lines: 20

In article <2377@dasys1.UUCP>, samperi@dasys1.UUCP (Dominick Samperi) writes:
> Question: What motivates a programmer to develop a large complex software
> system, perhaps requiring many weeks (or even years) of development effort,
> which is then posted for the world to use, for free?

Forgive me if this has been stated before, the large volume of net-noise 8-)
makes it hard to read all articles.

A real good reason I can think of to develop Shareware is that since the author
can Copyright the code, pre-release versions can be circulated as a sort of
alpha test.  This will do a couple of things:
	1. Give good code to those too cheap to support you 8-)
	2. Expose your product (and thus make your program well known.)
	3. Allow the multitudes to point out subtle bugs and suggest some 
	   improvements you had not thought of or overlooked.
	4. Give you some money to buy new blank development disks 8-)

Besides, it follows the hacker spirit!
==============================================================================
Jim Sewell					"Make knowledge free!"