🚀 go-pugleaf

/ imp@Solbourne.COM (Warner Losh) /  9:21 am  Mar 19, 1991 /
]>It's attitudes like these that cause me, "just" a shareware author,
]>irritation at pirates like you.  "Unregistered shareware", when used
]>beyond the test period

]By distributing your software via shareware, you are accepting the
]risk that people will not pay you for programs they really use.  You

]Face it.  With shareware, you will get maybe 1 in 50 people that are
]really using your program to send you money for it.  It is the risk
]you take for "giving it away" in the user's eyes.  I know that you
]aren't really giving it away, but when a person downloads something
]for free, they tend to assume, rightly or wrongly, that the program
]itself is free.

]Warner Losh		imp@Solbourne.COM

I agree with almost everything you said in your post, Warner, but just because
we agree with the state of reality doesn't mean that we can't try to change it
(programmers are the eternal optimists :-).  If we see something wrong and
never say anything about it, what's the likelihood of it changing?  Physics
has a law about conservation of momentum.  Periodically something will spark
a fire under my chair (usually my mood rather than what any particular poster
was saying) and I respond with a comment on morals (not legalities, since
the shareware concept isn't currently covered by any copyright laws; but
morals, PERSONAL morals which shape societal morals, and I'm just doing my
part to attempt to push societies morals in a direction I like (just as
everyone else does for their own points of view (don't you just love triple
nested parenthetical statements?))).

In reality, I estimate that less than 1 in a 100 of the people using my
shareware offerings actually register.  This estimate is based upon a lot of
information from a lot of different sources over a period of almost two years.
I don't mind it when people think my programs are trash and not worth wasting
disk space upon (so long as they then purge my programs and never again run
them).  I don't mind if people dislike the shareware concept, so long as they
DON'T USE shareware programs.  BUT, if they use shareware programs, then I
feel that they should be compelled to pay for them.  When you go to a car
dealership and test drive a car, you're not compelled to buy the car.  But, if
you don't buy the car, you shouldn't expect to be able to continue to drive it,
either.  (And I don't want to hear the tired old argument about the shareware
being "delivered to my door when I didn't ask for it, so it's mine!".  It never
is delivered to your door without a responsible person asking for it!  Either
you work for a company who has chosen to subscribe to the notes system (fully
knowing that everything from shareware to talk.bizzare.sex crosses the wires),
or a BBS operator has CHOSEN to have shareware on his system and you have
CHOSEN to download it.  We're all responsible for our own actions, whether we
like it or not.

I sense major subject drift here.  Sorry.

The point is that I (a member of this society) am simply trying to convince 
enough other members of this society to my point of view, such that society
as a whole will operate according to my point of view.  We all do this.  It's
how society changes.  Very few of us are ever very successful at it, but it's
the sum of the parts that makes it operate.

Everett
-----------------------

Everett Kaser                   Hewlett-Packard Company
...hplabs!hp-pcd!everett        work: (503) 750-3569   Corvallis, Oregon
everett%hpcvra@hplabs.hp.com    home: (503) 928-5259   Albany, Oregon