Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!pcrat!rick
From: rick@pcrat.uucp (Rick Richardson)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: Paying for Shareware (Was: Re: v09i070: newsclip 1.1...)
Message-ID: <1990Mar8.194038.2737@pcrat.uucp>
Date: 8 Mar 90 19:40:38 GMT
References: <1235@utoday.UUCP> <17923@rpp386.cactus.org> <15166@bfmny0.UU.NET> <34268@watmath.waterloo.edu> <15179@bfmny0.UU.NET> <1268@utoday.UUCP> <15191@bfmny0.UU.NET> <1288@utoday.UUCP>
Reply-To: rick@pcrat.UUCP (Rick Richardson)
Organization: PC Research, Inc., Tinton Falls, NJ
Lines: 34

In article <1288@utoday.UUCP> greenber@.UUCP (Ross M. Greenberg) writes:

>Actually, you're wrong.  UseNet is a lousy source of revenue for me. Seems
>it is for most of the shareware people I speak to - I'll go so far as to 
>say that no one I know has made any money off of their shareware through 
>UseNet as a channel.

I'll volunteer to be the first.  JetRoff, although not in the class of
FluShot in revenue, does reasonably well.  The reason for JetRoff's
acceptance has been the source distribution for a UNIX audience of
a key piece of high quality software not available from any other
vendor.  No scare tactics were employed, as I was confident that
the package could stand on its own merits.

There are other pieces of software that could be written that
I think would be successes if distributed as Shareware under
Usenet.  One that immediately comes to mind is a Quicken style
home and small business accounting package for UNIX.  I am confident
that a source distribution of such a product would meet with
widespread accolades.  Only purists and those jealous because
they didn't think of it first would complain.  And since we
all know about this idea, only the purists are left.*

* As has been mentioned, there is no definition of a pure
Usenet, nevertheless, Usenet purists exist.  They seem to
be in the vocal minority these days.

-Rick

-- 
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