trb@stag.UUCP ( Todd Burkey ) (02/17/88)
In article <42017@sun.uucp> cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis) writes: > >This is a joke right? What do you charge for your time? It took you less than >an hour to write MacDoodle? More clearly stated, you should probably said >"I got some money for 'MacDoodle 1.3'" because the word "made" implies that >more money came out of the result than went in. What you are forgetting is that a lot of us write software for the fun of it (i.e. to learn something or because we need a tool for a very specific need). The cost of developing it is paid back either in our 'learning' or in the time the tool saves us (else why would we write the tool?) In these cases, putting the program out as shareware is simply gravy (and further incentive to put out more useful tools). One bad thing about shareware that I have seen in the Mac world is that people seem to be throwing a shareware label on almost every piddly little program that they can think of. When I see a shareware notice on a simple program that took the author only an hour or two to write, then I think the shareware concept is being stretched a bit. I am sure the MacDoodle author got a fair amount of satisfaction out of developing MacDoodle and a lot a satisfaction out of the knowledge that there were several other people out there that liked his program. You shouldn't ever write a program and expect everyone to like it (although it would be nice). I have had a bit better luck with HDSCAN on the ST, possibly since I also offer a more advanced version for sale on the ST. The shareware version allows people to decide whether they really even need anything better (most may not actually need the extra features). The Unix version has no such teaser, so I doubt it will bring in anything... -Todd Burkey trb@stag.UUCP P.S. Chuck, I was really impressed with how fast HDSCAN ran on the Sun 4 that we had in for evaluation several weeks ago...It scanned 100+ MB of files (the full file system) in under 10 seconds. That seemed a lot faster than when I run it on our Sun 3/60's (which it looks like we will be getting more of anyway...the 4 was too expensive). It also proved invaluable, since the evaluation unit showed up without any documentation or information as to where anything was on the system so I had to do a lot of perusing to figure out what we did and didn't have on the system...