Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!rochester!PT.CS.CMU.EDU!andrew.cmu.edu!rs4u+ From: rs4u+@andrew.cmu.edu (Richard Siegel) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: Shareware: A specific case. Message-ID: Date: 3 Feb 88 15:43:20 GMT Organization: Carnegie Mellon University Lines: 41 In-Reply-To: <94fordjm@byuvax.bitnet> This is a rather specific case, but since I find myself in a similar situation, I feel much the same way: I have previously released to various nets a shareware program called 'fzzplot', which was capable of drawing simple plots and performing sumple analysis functions (line of best fit, mean & std. deviation, so forth). It was a shareware program. I find that if people are not forced to pay for something, they won't. I've seen (and heard of) people using my program, and I know perfectly well that they haven't sent in the shareware fee. At this point it's worth noting that while I request some $ "if you like and use the program", I don't attach any moral significance to it. It's just that I pay for shareware, and expect others to do so as well. Anyway, the response to my shareware has been quite disappointing. Now, I'm preparing for release FzzPlot's successor. I may be biased, but independent and unbiased people have told me that I should skip the shareware and market it commercially. The thing is, this program is quite useful, especially to the subset of scientific users who have need of a good plotting program. I'm interested in producing "tools to make tools", and less interested in receiving monetary compensation for producing them. As you say: "The issue for me, by the way, is not whether I can make a pile of money off of a program which has a very narrowly defined audience of users, but whether I can contribute to the research community without giving a freebie to people who care mostly about the big buck." While my audience isn't as narrow, my intent is the same. I want to provide people with something useful, but if someone's too cheap to pay for it, they can go die. I generally enforce this by providing support for my shareware products; for example, may suggestions from purchasers of the old FzzPlot have been integrated into the new FzzPlot, and those same purchasers will receive free copies of the new program. Rather than saying "to hell with you if you don't pay", I say "look at what you get if you DO pay", even though my privately held opinion is what I state above: "if you're to cheap, then to hell with you." --Rich