werner@ut-ngp.UUCP (Werner Uhrig) (02/11/86)
An early version has been posted (too early??) to this group sometimes last year. A very early version of FastEddie was mercilessly critisized in MacTutor but after many corrections and improvements, I believe, this "Programmable Editing Environment" deserves another look. I know of no other editor for the Mac which comes closer to having "sex-appeal" to the 'hacking' user. The author, Daniel Grossbard, is a starving artist and CS-grad-student, and allows free distribution of a "castrated" version limited to handling only small files, with the hope of finding approval and orders by mail of the "unmangled" version at $48. He is as little profit-oriented as anyone I can think of, but needs some motivation ($$$ for food) to keep improving FastEddie. To motivate wide distribution, he provides each registered user with a personalized demo-program for further distribution and promises to return 33% of all proceeds to the owner of the registered demo which result in further sales. The demo prints out an order form for you when using the "About FastEddie" menu-item under the Apple, which includes the registered-owner's serial-number. While the posted demo-version is registered to me, I would object to postings on USENET with a direct personal gain like this going to the poster, including myself. Therefore, to avoid any misunderstandings, I told the author that I do not wish to receive any benefits from distributing his program-demo, period. No matter how and where I pass on his demo. That he can either keep the $16(33% of $48), if in need, or pass it on to a charity, or return it to the purchaser. In this case, and possibly to set an example on how to make distribution through USENET desirable and beneficial to USENET-users, I invite you (should you decide to purchase FastEddie), to either make out a check for $48 (if you are mostly concerned about the welfare of this struggling hacker) to the author, or send him $32 with a reference to my posting, indicating that you, like I, prefer not to receive any benefits of distributing the demo, or include a seperate check for $16, made out to your favorite charity and ask that Daniel get it there (and deduct $16 from your taxes (-:) Did I manage to be fair to everyone? I sure hope you think so. Cheers, ---Werner PS: Daniel can be reached on the net. Mail to me and I'll forward. Can't post his net-address without asking first.