Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!hplabs!hplabsz!taylor
From: aburt@isis.UUCP (Andrew Burt)
Newsgroups: comp.society
Subject: Re: "Soap software" - One scenario for the Software market
Message-ID: <1586@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM>
Date: 19 Feb 88 01:10:13 GMT
Sender: taylor@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM
Organization: Math/CS, University of Denver
Lines: 41
Approved: taylor@hplabs

Kurt Guntheroth replied to John Miller with:

> Ah, but you forget, soap software is free, like broadcast TV.  Will you pay
> for a modified software version rather than accept the free one?  Some will
> of course, and some will buy additional software to remove commercials from
> their soap software.

I would be willing to purchase soap-s/w IF the ad disabled itself after
some small number of runs.  I don't mind watching commercials the first time
I see them, but it's the 2nd...Nth time that I get very annoyed with it.

If the ad ran 3-5 times, then quit, that would be fine.  (But it should be
rerunable on demand, should I get interested in seeing it again.)

Another idea that might be viable to lower the overall cost of s/w,
something I proposed in the midst of the copy-protection battles in
comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.misc,etc. is that of large scale software publishers,
in place of today's vast array of small one-shot software companies.

Microsoft is certainly a "large" s/w pub. by today's standards, but not
on the same scale as Prentice-Hall is, say, for computer science books.

With the resources to produce and market s/w concentrated in larger
places these processes would not be duplicated by each small company with
a terrific program to sell.  The arrangement could work as the current
author-publisher one does.  This could also serve as an avenue for
shareware authors who aren't really happy with the idea that few people
will pay for their code: They could submit it as a proposal for a "paperback"
program to a publisher, as an author would a novel.

After all, the cost of a floppy is $.25 or less, the publishing houses
would have high volume (of different s/w) to keep printing costs lower
overall.  I think today's book publishers are especially well suited to
entering the market this way:  They already have the printing facilities,
the distribution channels, a sales force, know how to find editors for
the related topic, etc.

Are there any existing examples of book publishers that are now doing software
on a large scale?  Any examples of s/w-only publishing houses?

Andrew Burt