BILLW@SRI-KL.ARPA (07/04/84)
From: William Chops Westfield <BILLW@SRI-KL.ARPA> I am interested in the possible paths that future microcomputer software development might take. There has been a lot of discussion on this and other lists about copy protection, pricing, support, ethics, upgrades, quality of software, etc. A lot of the current upheaval is caused by the youth of the industry, and things are bound to settle down eventually, but I am wondering which direction things everything will be going. Here are a few ideas: Current status: Software is largely a cottage industry, with programs being written by individual programmers, and marketed though publishers. Occasionally a "software house" (ala Microsoft) or a manufacturer will write a large set of software. Pricing and quality vary wildly. Option 1: As the number of computers capable of running the same software (total number of computer - ie if 1e8 macs sell, even with no mac-alikes, thats a big market), companies like Borland will become profitable and proliferate. They will sell quality software at low prices, reducing the need for copy protection, etc. Companies like uSoft will be forced into this mold to compete. Cottage programmers will not be able to get a product to market fast enough to make it worth their while. (I already had this problem. remember when there were NO good communications programs for the IBM PC? Didn't last very long...) Questions: I tend to feel that this will cause the quality of software to stabalize, as Borland and equivilents employ many of the good programmers around. The quality will be quite good, but not as high as the BEST of the sort of thing you can get now. (You will no longer end of paying $60 for a piece of crap, but programs like Fancy Font or MINCE (both largely labors of love, I guess) may disapear with the cottage programmers). Is this good or bad? Option 2: As microcomputers become more of an appliance, manufacturers will include "everything" necessary. This will lead to a sort of catastrophic distruction of the software market. As fewer compilers/tools are available, fewer programmers will exist, leading to still less programming... [I hope not!] I am rather at loss to explain where all the customers buying Turbo Pascal are comming from. After all, programming is supposed to be difficult. Or do most copies of Turbo end up like our copy of IBMPC communications package? - purchased because it was cheap, but hardly ever used... Option 3: Borland, like some other places, will discover that there is a huge market even if their prices are higher. They'll raise the prices, add copy protection, and become like Microsoft. Quality will improve over the current level, but prices will soar also. [This sort of thing has already happened on the business software front. DBASE II, LOTUS 123, etc are all EXPENSIVE, and still sell...] Sigh. Comments: What will happen to public domain software? As user groups become more organized, will it become better organized, supported, etc? (consider DECUS as an example). Currently, some of the best TOPS20 software around is essentially public domain (EMACS, MMail system, PASCAL, KERMIT, MODEM), for example. In many cases already, PD software is much better than similar commercial software, but no one knows about it. Will good PD programmers decide they'd rather make money? [Lauren and I sold out (or tried to), RMS is writing PD UNIX...] What about the "freeware" concept? There are a couple of such authors out there, how does it seem to work? Sigh. Enough. Bill Westfield "I got blisters on my fingers" -------
anthro@ut-ngp.UUCP (Michael Fischer) (07/21/84)
<> The future of software will remain with the cottage programmer, although the organization will change somewhat. The principal problem that exists, as mentioned, is the difficulty of getting the product to market. The time and expense involved can be staggering to an individual. Advertising support alone must exceed $100k, and that is a paltry sum these days. The industry would like the programmers' sweatshop approach, but that probably will not wash. While many programmers will work for a salary, many of the best will not. A single skilled programmer can knock down $50,000 a year in first deliverys only, and another $50-100k per year in residuals. Not many of these programmers' works are widely available, since they are delivered in highly priced packages, although many of them would be valuable to a wider audience. My view of the future is really a continuation of the past. Most of the product that is 'hot' was either a company's startup product, ie their transformation from cottage to big-time, or a product that was written by a independant and distributed by a pre-existing group. I think that this will continue with a greater organization, much like the publishing industry, or the music industry. Sure minor products will be hacked out by staff programmers, but I think that the 'huge' software will continue from its present source. Mike Fischer anthro@utngp