barry@pico.math.ucla.edu (Barry Merriman) (02/07/91)
Lighthouse Design continues to be innovative and progressive in their software distribution policies. In our last episode, their academic pricing policy was thwarted by the miserly University Bookstore. Undaunted, our heroes have altered their strategy: (The following is taken with permission from email from Jonathan Schwartz of Lighthouse Design, makers of Diagram!) ----------------------------------------- Barry Merriman <barry@math.ucla.edu> responds: >at UCLA we won't get the low Diagram! >prices because the local authorities won't pay the site license fee. >So you see, their approach to pricing---though progressive and well >intentioned---doesn't work. You are absolutely right. In fact, the old way of doing things (as you note above) defeated the best of our intentions: giving higher education easy access to our software. In conversations with students, bookstores, and academic computing facilities, we quickly learned that our policy wasn't as grand as we'd envisioned, and that it should change. So we changed it. As of the second issue of NeXTWORLD (~March 15, 1991), students or faculty/staff may call NeXTConnection (800-800-NeXT) and purchase Diagram! for $25 (twenty-five dollars) and $75 (seventy-five dollars) respectively. What's the hook? Two hooks. Hook 1: no packaging. Academic buyers get the full commercial software distribution (list $399), but you won't get the paper manual, or our nifty box and wrapper. Of course, all documentation is on-line (indexed for digital librarian), and the disk comes in a snazzy mailer. Hook 2: keep in touch. If you like the software, we'd like you to tell us why. And if you don't like the software, we'd like to know why, too, so we can fix it. Diagram! has a built-in feedback feature (a "Make Suggestion..." menu item), so it should be easy. We'd also encourage you to tell a friend. Lighthouse Design started developing for the NeXT when the higher ed market was the *only* market around. They hold a special place in our corporate vision (despite their bookstores :-), and if we're to continue offering discounts, we need your help in finding customers. Thanks for voicing your opinions. It makes a huge difference. Jonathan Schwartz Vice President, Sales and Marketing Lighthouse Design, Ltd. ------------------------------------------------------------------- So, our heroes have saved the day once again. Thanks! Now I can get my academic discount copy of Diagram!! (Though I admit it is one program I would be willing to pay the full price for.) -- Barry Merriman UCLA Dept. of Math UCLA Inst. for Fusion and Plasma Research barry@math.ucla.edu (Internet)
lane@CAMIS.STANFORD.EDU (Christopher D. Lane) (05/15/91)
I've FTP'd a new version of MOTD.tar.Z to the submissions directory
of the cs.orst.edu NeXT archive.
This version fixes a bug that a couple of sites reported (directly
and via comp.sys.next) regarding 'garbaged' user names in the 'wtmp'
file (as part of MOTD's LoginHook function) coincident with the
'new mail' message.
Let me know if this continues to be a problem,
- Christopher
PS: Being a {Login/Logout}Hook, don't use MOTD with 2.0, use 2.1