kevin@claris.com (Kevin Watts) (05/19/89)
From article <memo.127827@lynx.northeastern.edu>, by davidbrierley@lynx.northeastern.edu: > ... People with older versions usually must pay an early version > penalty in order to trade in their old version for the new one. > ... The question is whether or not this is a case > of piracy on the part of the software publisher (discriminatory pricing). I don't see that it is. For example, compare this to a similar situation in the automobile industry: Every year, manufacturers release new models of their cars, frequently at a similar price to that of the year before. Would you seriously expect them to allow you to purchase the new 'version' at anything other than the full retail price? Now, I realize that there is one significant difference between cars and software: cars cost a lot of money to build, not just to design, whereas almost all of the cost (to the publisher) of software is in the design (i.e. programming). Not ALL the cost, mind; there is significant cost in packaging, distributing, marketing, etc. But the fact remains: when you buy a software package, you are making a simple transaction - your money in return for ONE COPY of that software. I will certainly agree that the publisher has an obligation to ensure that the software functions essentially as desribed, and so it is reasonable for users to expect free (or nominal cost) 'bug fix' updates. Major upgrades are another matter. Large portions are rewritten and added; the functionality of packages is markedly improved (one would hope, anyway :-) This takes significant resources (i.e. time, money and good old sweat - frequently from people who would rather be working on a new project). The end result often bares little resemblance to the older version, and could almost be considered a new program. In these cases, it is definitely unreasable for a user to expect to receive an upgrade gratis. The situation is very similar to of the new car model. In fact, software publishers are doing customers a favour by allowing upgrades at costs significantly less than the full retail cost. Of course, there are obvious marketing reasons for doing so - I won't claim anybody's being altruistic here. Upgrade fees can be justified by at least the following: The publisher deserves a fair return for the work to improve the software. The user has had the use of the old version for however long - in fact, if upgrades were free the new purchasers might claim that THEY were being discriminated against! On the other hand, since the material cost of giving a customer a new copy is relatively small compared to traditional products (i.e. cars), it doesn't seem unreasonable to provide upgrades at less than the full price - the customer has already paid his/her share of the development costs for the older version, upon which the new one is based. One can quibble endlessly about how much upgrade fees should be; ultimately I think that's up to the free market to decide. But it seems quite clear that one's vote should be cast by not obtaining an upgrade that one considers overpriced - NOT by pirating it. The whole problem with software piracy, as opposed to traditional theft, is that it's so easy, and the theft involved is not obvious to everybody - you can't copy a car, you have to take it away from somebody else if you don't want to pay for it, but you can copy software. I expect the problem of software piracy to dimish as time goes on: People are gradually becoming accustomed to the fact that software piracy is THEFT, and in larger installations (corporations, schools, etc.) site licensing is becoming more common (ironically returning us to the days of single copies of software, highly priced, shared by many users; on a network instead of a mainframe now, but not much different). The hobbyist is becoming less and less important to software publishers - sad, but true. And just because I work for a major software house doesn't mean that I like to see individual users ignored - I don't think we at Claris are guilty of that, but I do see it happenning in the industry as a whole. Fortunately there will always be plenty of talented individuals freely sharing code with other and providing mutual support. This is especially important in Apple // land, since it's not going to make business sense for the major companies to support the Apple // forever. You can gripe about all you want (I'm NOT trying to start another round of moaning), but it will happen eventually. This has rambled a bit. Sorry. I don't like to see too much of the blame for piracy being pushed back upon developers - sure, software is expensive, but then good software takes an enormous amount of work to develop and market. Believe me, I know whereof I speak! -- Kevin Watts ! Any opinions expressed here are my own, and are not Claris Corporation ! neccessarily shared by anyone else. Unless they are kevin@claris.com ! patently absurd, in which case they're not mine either.