timl@maxwell.Concordia.CA ( TIM LAPIN ) (09/13/89)
Hi all, This question has been bugging me for some time. If you have some software that you wrote and wished to make money on, is it kosher to post the binary in the appropriate group and ask for a small fee (say $5-$10)? Or is the more expensive method of conventional mail order preferred? Or perhaps the announcement should consist of a product announcement plus an e-mail address and price? Your answers will be appreciated. Also, if the first option is the done thing, does anyone have any stats on average returns by the given product authors? -- Tim Lapin |INTERNET: timl@maxwell.concordia.ca| Printed Opinions? Computer Centre |BITNET: timl@vax2.concordia.ca | Just the fax Concordia University |Tel: (514) 848-7639 | ma'am.
epsilon@wet.UUCP (Eric P. Scott) (09/14/89)
In article <1218@clyde.Concordia.CA> timl@maxwell.Concordia.Ca ( TIM LAPIN ) writes: >This question has been bugging me for some time. If you have some software >that you wrote and wished to make money on, is it kosher to post the binary >in the appropriate group and ask for a small fee (say $5-$10)? Or is the >more expensive method of conventional mail order preferred? Or perhaps the >announcement should consist of a product announcement plus an e-mail address >and price? For the nit-picky among us: "PD" as it's commonly understood means Public Domain--i.e. you surrender ALL rights to it. What you're talking about goes by a couple of names (SHAREWARE comes to mind). It's a commercial enterprise, and therefore belongs in the "biz" hierarchy. (See the article on alternative newsgroup hierarchies in news.announce.newusers for more info on biz groups.) I would expect the moderators to politely reject postings that asked for money in the mainstream groups. (Brandon?) Basically, anything that solicits money for anything other than a legitimate charitable cause (e.g. disaster relief) is going to piss people off. There are places for \individual/ for sale/ wanted stuff, but even those aren't appropriate in your case. Take it to biz.comp.software. -=EPS=-
wcs) (09/21/89)
In article <1218@clyde.Concordia.CA> timl@maxwell.Concordia.Ca ( TIM LAPIN ) writes:
]This question has been bugging me for some time. If you have some software
]that you wrote and wished to make money on, is it kosher to post the binary
]in the appropriate group and ask for a small fee (say $5-$10)?
SUMMARY - Different groups have different policies, though some
people will flame you whatever you do. Follow them!
Post source, or at least send source to people who pay you for the product
- they deserve to know what they're REALLY getting, and can customize or
improve the product themselves. If you copyright stuff, do it right.
There are lots of differing opinions about this. Originally USENET
was mostly at Universities and researchy companies like Bell Labs,
and commercial use was frowned upon, though talking about (other
people's) products was ok. A lot of traffic began to be carried
over the Arpanet, which is expressly non-commercial.
Selling individual items of your own (e.g. used cars, your old PC or
VAX, etc.) has been accepted, as long as you use Distribution: to avoid
telling the entire world about your used car in New Jersey.
Selling stuff as a regular business was not.
Comp.newprod was created for announcing products of general interest.
The moderator periodically posts guidelines; announcements should be
technical rather than sales-oriented. A new and nifty software product
is reasonable; another shipment of PC-Clones at your retail shop isn't.
Comp.binaries.ibm.pc is for distributing binaries of MS-DOS software;
most of it is public domain, though some is shareware, and there are
periodic flamefests about what's acceptable. The policy there seems
to be that software that DEMANDS money is unacceptable, but software
that asks for money if you like the product is usually ok. The
moderator has been taking a break (moved and doesn't have his new site
really going yet), so postings have been in comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d .
Other PC binary groups (amiga, mac, ..) may have different policies.
Biz.* was created for people who want to advertise stuff and don't
mind carrying other people's advertising. I don't know its guidelines,
but I suspect you could post code there. Read for a while and see.
As far as posting binaries is concerned, it's much more useful to
post sources (for UNIX and portable software). Binary-only posting
is mainly used for PCs where people may not have compatible compilers,
or where compiling is generally a pain (needs lots of disk, compatible
"make"-equivalents, etc.) Even then, post source with the binaries.
(It's ok to post sources in binary groups - they exist so people don't
post binaries in human-readable groups.) Use whatever local
conventions for encoding the binaries - for .ibm.pc, the main
convention is zoo + uuencode, with arc+uuencode as a common but older
standard. Don't use PKARC format, because lots of people can't read it.
Bill Stewart
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