holland@mips.csc.ti.com (Fred Hollander) (02/05/88)
About a month ago, I had posted a survey to the net concerning shareware. I had two similar sets of questions for authors and users. Four authors responded, no users. That makes this survey pretty useless, but, let me follow through on this anyway. At least one requested that his comments not be tied to his name. I could use both, but, he probably didn't guess that only four people would respond. So, to maintain confidentiality, I've ommitted authors' names and replaced the description with a very general category. Comments: General comments are that people are not willing to pay even a small fee for a useful program. Shareware is sometimes the only facility some people have for distributing software. Generally, it is software that was done just for fun, so the profits are secondary. One program is being distributed commercially on the Diskette Gazette without the author's consent. One deliberately bugged the shareware release to encourage upgrades. Is this a new marketing concept: bug elasticity, balancing the degree of "bugginess" to encourage upgrades without discouraging sales? :-) Results: 1. Software Title/Description 2. Author 3. Compatible Computer Systems 4. Suggested Shareware Fee 5. Number of Copies Sold 6. Average Fee Received 1. Utility 2. 3. Mac, SE, Mac II 4. $20 + $10 for upgrade 5. 1 6. $30 1. Game 2. 3. All Macintosh with 512K or more 4. $10 5. ~70, at a rate of about 1.5 copies/week 6. $10 1. Game 2. 3. 512K / 512Ke / Mac + / SE (soon to be Mac II) 4. $5 5. 1 6. $5 1. Utility 2. 3. Mac 128K or more 4. $8, $20 for full version 5. 20 6. $20 Fred Hollander Computer Science Center Texas Instruments, Inc. holland%ti-csl@csnet-rela The above statements are my own and not representative of Texas Instruments.