From: rjm@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Ryan Mitchell)
Subject: Re: More on MODEDIT/crippleware
Organization: Purdue University
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 04:36:00 GMT

First of all, let me apologize to Norman for the "negative postings" 
that my article generated.  The term "crippleware" may have been a 
little strong for ModEdit 3.0 but I stand by my original premise that
it does not follow the shareware concept because the author did not 
"share" the entire program for evaluation.  Let me also remind everyone
that I hold nothing against Mr. Lin and in fact admire him because he 
appears to be a fine, intelligent, personable man, but I feel that this
popular practice of disabling features should be stopped or not 
classified as shareware.

In article <BxI8FD.DzB@constellation.ecn.uoknor.edu> norlin@midway.ecn.uoknor.edu (Norman Lin) writes:
>             The fundamental selling point of the program is the new
>method of entry/display of notes, where a note "ruler" goes vertically
>up the screen and you place dots and bars along the screen to
>indicate pitch and duration.  This is what I call the "piano roll
>display."  Why do you say it is disabled?  I know of no other MOD
>editor supporting this style of display, and I have found in my
>personal experience that this style of display is MUCH easier,
>more intuitive, and faster to use than other MOD editors where you
>type in a note and an octave.
>
>Of the 43 functions selectable from the main menu, 2 are disabled:
>saving all samples, and real time recording from the keyboard.

The two main points that excited me about ModEdit 3.0 were the 
real-time recording and the piano-roll display.  As for the latter,
upon starting the demo and playing a MOD I saw nothing; perhaps
I misunderstood and this is simply not a feature except for during
the recording process.  If so, I apologize and also make a 
suggestion for ModEdit 4.0. :-)  

The real-time recording is a major downfall in the demonstration
version.  Yes it is possible to save/load/edit but I still believe
that the real-time recording is a fundamental selling point and
could not be tested, and thus is a "cripple."  The inability to
save all samples in a MOD, while more insignificant, still does
not honor the shareware concept.

>I feel I'm being rather generous with ModEdit, in fact.  You can
>completely create, edit, load, and save MODs with ModEdit 3, in a
>much easier and faster manner than any other MOD editor I know of
>because of the intuitive piano-roll style of display.  I could have
>disabled "save" or something silly like that, but I wanted to give
>users a piece of software that, I feel, is very evaluatable and
>completely usable in its unregistered state.

Yes, you are being very generous--if one considers ModEdit to be
a demo program.  As for classifying it as shareware you are being
selfish (sorry, I'm not trying to be rude, just making a point)
because the concept of shareware is based on honesty and trust. 
When shareware was originated, programs were released fully and
people who used them were to send in a fee and that was that--
in many cases there weren't even any "official" disks sent to 
the user because the program was full and complete.  Recently 
there has been a trend to disable features like yours and I 
don't personally consider that to be shareware. Instead it is 
more of a demo, where one receives the real program upon payment.

I personally refuse to support an author who disables features
and markets it as shareware because it gives me the feeling that
the author distrusts me, which puts the relationship into the
same situation that the commercial programmer/customer has.  If
so, I may as well purchase commercial software because it 
usually more widely known and reviewed.  If, on the other hand,
the program is distributed as a demo (DigiStudio comes to mind),
I am more willing to purchase it (although not as willingly
as true shareware) because the customer/marketer relationship
is clearly defined to start with.  Of course when purchasing
the demo, I expect that I will receive significant extras for
my money.

I hope that "shareware" authors will understand the point that
I'm trying to make and do one of two things:  make their 
software truly shareware or make it clearly known that their
software is a demo.  I believe that there are many others out
in PC-land that feel the same way I do and I hate to see
good programs and programmers fail because of this, but it
could happen.  Finally, I thank Norman for his fine programming
and willingness to listen, apologize to him because of the 
example I made of him, and wish him the best of luck.

Ryan

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      ========/   Ryan      /======/  /    rjm@mentor.cc.purdue.edu  | 
      ======/   Mitchell  /======/  /   mitcherj@sage.cc.purdue.edu  |
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Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard