🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Aug9.181408.1652@dpp> dpp@athena.com (David Pollak) writes:
>I know it's probably not the best idea to jump into this fight...
>
>> Irving_Wolfe writes
>> > >>  We publish SOLID VALUE for the intelligent investor.	NextMail OK
>> > >> Info free; sample $20.
>
>Just as a little note.  Every copy of Mr. Wolfe's signature contains an
>advertisement.  If I am not mistaken, this violates the rules governing
>the government sponsored portion of the Internet.  The Internet is policed
>to a great degree by cooperation with the rules, just as software use is
>to a great degree voluntary.  I firmly believe that simply because
>something is voluntary, people should do the legally correct thing.

    DARPA, the ARPAnet broke up years ago.  Most of the traffic goes
    through educational or corporate institutions, especially bay-area
    traffic.  I am not sure how much gov. funding Educational institutions
    get these days as related to their internet access.

><<Shameless Plug - On>>
>
>At Athena Design, we have been spending lots of time thinking about this
>issue and talking to other users.  We priced our Mesa spreadsheet below
>both WingZ and Improv so that it is more accessible to the NeXT community.
>We offer a floating license manager to sites of 25+ users.  Because of
>popular demand, we will be dropping that number to 5+ users.
>
>We offer free demo copies of the archives.  These copies load all Mesa
>worksheets and their only limitation is that they can only create and save
>worksheets of 32 by 32 cells.	I expect that quite a number of people will
>be able to use this version of Mesa for simple tasks and these folks will
>never have to pay to use Mesa.  For the small tasks that can be fit into a
>32 by 32 worksheet, paying for a full copy of the product is silly.

    This brings up an excellent point... Instead of putting time limits on
    Demos do something like the above, limit the size of the objects being
    manipulated and give them relatively generous values instead with all
    other capabilities enabled.  A 32x32 worksheet is fine for many
    purposes but not, say, for the accounting department of a business.
    Ergo, no sales are lost to anyone who would use the product in a
    meaningful way.  People who do not use the product for anything greater
    then 32x32 would probably not be able to justify the cost of buying the
    product anyway, ergo no sales are lost to them either.

    You get several advantages:

    (1) A usable program distributed publically equates to free publicity

    (2) many people can actually use said distributed product for real
	work, thus increasing the number of positive postings on the net,
	reviews (more free publicity), and who knows, when they graduate to
	larger projects they might just decide to *buy* it since they are
	so used to it.

    (3) Fewer idiot-level technical support calls.  People who use the demo
	version DO NOT EXPECT TECHNICAL SUPPORT FOR SOMETHING FREE.  They
	will learn the product on their own time and when it comes time to
	buy it they will already have a nontrivial amount of
	experience, hence fewer technical support calls.

					    -Matt

>David
>
>--
>David Pollak - dpp@athena.com - NeXTMail Compliant
>Attorney at Law,
>Feeder of the Bears, Athena Design, Inc.

--

    Matthew Dillon	    dillon@Overload.Berkeley.CA.US
    891 Regal Rd.	    uunet.uu.net!overload!dillon
    Berkeley, Ca. 94708     ham: KC6LVW (no mail drop)
    USA