On Mon, Nov 30, 1998 at 02:30:01PM -0800, Jack Killpatrick wrote:
> The shareware idea has been adopted by so many companies, I practically
> forgot it's roots. I download "evaluation" copies of software all the
> time...and am glad that I'm given the option to "try before I buy" (I think
> that term was coined in the Shareware world).
That's not shareware. That's commercial software with a limited trial period.
Shareware is commonly found in the PC & Mac world, is most often written
by individual authors, and comes with documentation that asks for
a voluntary donation.
> Maybe you just go freeware or commercial, with no line in between?
Yes. And at the moment, I use very little commercial software. Let's see...
Solaris, SunOS, and MacOS. That's it.
> With respect to begware/shareware/evals, though, as you say, if you give
> someone the opportunity *not* to pay for something that they use, well,
> don't go crying to mommy when they *do* use it for free and don't respect
> your efforts. This is the "real" world, eh...not exactly famous for its
> abundance of integrity.
I regard shareware as an attempt to guilt people into paying by
eliminating the possibility that they can compensate the author
in some other fashion. (Most shareware is distributed only in binary
form, which makes it impossible to modify the code.)
Now freeware -- that's another matter. I make every effort to repay
the authors of the freeware packages that I use with bug reports, bug
fixes, new code, documentation, credits, and freeware of my own.
---Rsk
Rich Kulawiec
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
____________________________________________________________________
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Join The Web Consultants Association : Register on our web site Now
Web Consultants Web Site : http://just4u.com/webconsultants
If you lose the instructions All subscription/unsubscribing can be done
directly from our website for all our lists.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
