🚀 go-pugleaf

Wait a minute, there's really two issues here, and this venomous personal
flaming is OUT OF LINE on both of them.  What side of the bed did you guys
get up on???! :-)

In no particular order - 

Issue 1:  Should shareware be distributed on Usenet?  My own opinion on
this is no, because while shareware is definitely an *alternative*
commercial channel, and maybe a good one, it *is* a commercial channel
and as such shouldn't piggyback on the core Usenet distribution.  On
biz.* it would be fine, or shareware authors could start their own new
share.* distribution.

Issue 2:  Is shareware an abomination per se?  Weird religious wars over
intellectual property concepts seem like a waste of bandwidth here.
Should users feel obligated to pay for shareware they get and use?  This
is a nuanced question.  Nobody's legally obligated, that seems certain
(even if the software prints YOU ARE LEGALLY OBLIGATED in 43 point
type); the moral obligation only comes if you think that a *voluntary
compliance* commercial channel deserves encouragement.  All shareware
authors can do is jawbone, more or less vigorously (or hold out a carrot
like a printed manual); from a pragmatic standpoint they seem to expect
anywhere from 2 to 20 percent compliance.

These issues have been debated to death on commercial nets and BBS's
where shareware is more prevalent.  It's not discussed much in comp.*
because of Issue 1 -- net consensus seems to discourage posting shareware
to the core distribution.

It's fun to watch grizzled net.debate veterans sharpen their knives over
an unfamiliar topic, but personal attacks?  Yeccchh, as MAD sez.

-- 
"UNIX should be used          ::   Tom Neff <tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET> or
 as an adjective." -- AT&T   ::    ...uunet!bfmny0!tneff (UUCP only)