🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1237@utoday.UUCP> greenber@utoday.UUCP (Ross M. Greenberg) writes:

>[omitted section about suing unregistered shareware users]... people
>too unethical to register for their usage of someone else's intellectual
>property probably don;t [sic] have deep enough pockets to go after.

Could you help me with this?  Are unethical people poor, or are poor
people unethical?  An interesting concept in either case.  I bet
I could really generate flames by guessing which political party you
belong to...

I apologize to those who are tired of this discussion, but I must
add a few thoughts:

1)  We were exposed to quite a lot of shareware in
comp.binaries.ibm.pc this year (when the group was active).  I was
always disappointed when I decoded a program and found that it was not
public domain.  The most desirable programs delivered over the Usenet
are the ones that include source code and are free to use and "hack
on".  This, to me, represents the unified creative spirit that should
typify the Usenet.  Otherwise the whole thing is just a glorified
bulletin board (where I think shareware rightfully belongs).

2)  Within the group of shareware programs that I saw, there were two
main types: the ones where the bulk of the programing effort had gone
into solid, useful, efficient code; and the ones where a substantial
effort had gone into creating screenfuls of (often) brightly-colored,
blinking messages reminding the user to send money.  I know that these
types are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but the correlation was too
great to be coincidence.  The documentation also generally reflects the
author's bias.

3)  A good, solid, bug-free piece of shareware is probably worth $10 -
$20.  I say this not to belittle the efforts of the individual
programmers, but because that's what seems to be fair in today's
competitive marketplace.  For example, I purchased Borland's Turbo C
for $50 through an educational discount, and PCTOOLS costs
approximately $70 if one finds a good discount.  These are both (in my
opinion) high quality software products that serve a variety of needs.
In addition, they both come with complete, *bound* documentation.  The
companies are proven and I know they will be around for support and
upgrades.  When I get a piece of shareware with incomplete, badly-
formatted documentation, from somebody working out of their basement,
and they want me to send them $20 - $30 or more, I'm just amused. 

4)  A final note to shareware authors from an "end user".  If you want
my money: write solid, useful code and put a message in the documentation
about how much you want (but be realistic) and where to send it.
Otherwise, if you: a) are in my face every time I run the program; b)
are unrealistic about the price; c) force me to type in a number or
string when I try to execute; or d) fill my harddisk with files
like "license", "credit.crd", "copyrght" or "order.frm", then my only
response is... del *.*.  And, hey, that doesn't infringe *anyone's*
copyright (now matter how poorly based in actual law).

Brad Jones
bjones@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu
bjones@uhccux.bitnet

-- 
		Brad Jones  bjones@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu
			    bjones@uhccux.bitnet