Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!husc6!spdcc!dyer
From: dyer@spdcc.COM (Steve Dyer)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: 'nmake' manual pages
Keywords: nmake manual
Message-ID: <3337@ursa-major.SPDCC.COM>
Date: 23 May 89 02:13:28 GMT
References: <1989@internal.Apple.COM> <11580@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com>
Reply-To: dyer@ursa-major.spdcc.COM (Steve Dyer)
Organization: S.P. Dyer Computer Consulting, Cambridge MA
Lines: 27

In article <11580@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com> smb@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Steven M. Bellovin) writes:
>Several people have complained about the quality of nmake and/or
>its documentation.  Nmake is part of the Toolchest precisely because
>AT&T chose not to make it an official product.  This may be smart
>or stupid -- that's a business call, and I won't try to second-guess
>it in public.  But among the factors that go into such a decision
>are the costs -- debugging, maintenance, documentation (yes, that
>costs money (a lot of it) to produce -- etc.

For God's sakes, if the damn thing were available from the toolchest
or from comp.sources.whatever for FREE, we wouldn't be hearing the
kind of complaints that we're hearing here.  Perhaps instead of complaints
you'd be seeing bug fixes freely posted, and maybe we'd all end up with
a useful piece of software.  Instead, we've got this nether-thing which
seems to have all the BAD aspects of proprietary software with none of
its advantages.

It seems that it's only in the software biz that you can pay $1000
or more and still get something which doesn't work.  OK, that's a
dangerously naive statement :-) :-).  Nonetheless, I don't see why
if something isn't worth the $1000, AT&T insists on selling it for
that much.

-- 
Steve Dyer
dyer@ursa-major.spdcc.com aka {ima,harvard,rayssd,linus,m2c}!spdcc!dyer
dyer@arktouros.mit.edu