From: johnm@cory.Berkeley.EDU (John D. Mitchell)
Subject: Re: Miscellany (Re: 24-hour info line notes)
Organization: University of California, at Berkeley
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 22:42:28 GMT

In article <9301090801.aa19983@pandora.sf.ca.us>
<pcgeos-list@pandora.sf.ca.us> writes:
>On 1/08/93 Shag said:
>>johnm@cory.Berkeley.EDU (John D. Mitchell) writes:
[...]
>>>The System Software Overview has been completely rewritten and was not done
>>>in GeoWrite (I don't know why not either).  And no it won't be posted
>>>electronically.
>>
>>Feh.  Foo.  Bar.  Baz.  I suppose if I bought it then typed it in (using
>>GeoWrite) and uploaded it, they'd be rather upset, too.  (Although somehow
>>I suspect the SSO is not responsible for a significant chunk of Geoworks'
>>revenue...)

>                            I can tell you in one word,GREED. I can see
>   the day coming when the "public" exchange of information will come
>   to and end. ie no more libraries. You will only be able get information
>   " knowledge" if you pay for it. Maybe I read too much science fiction
>   but I see signs of it already.
>                 Propritary knowledge is one thing but information that has
>   no  effect on a companies  sales of a product is another.  Another beef  I
>   have are bugs, a lot of companies that publish software are not very forth-
>   coming in letting the users know this information. They would rather
>   sell us 
>   a new and usually more expensive version, and the tell us that they fixed
>   the bugs from the previous version in the newest one.
>                Considering we do not really "own" most software we purchase
>   I feel    that Geoworks and other companies could do lots better in after
>   "purchase" support.

While there are many examples to 'prove' you points, that doesn't
necessarily make everybody (company, whatever) evil.  There are many
reasons besides 'greed' for not just posting every single bit of
information that a company (person, whatever) makes.

It takes a good bit of time, money, energy, and other resources to produce
even the smallest upgrade and more time, money, etc. to distribute that
product and yet even still more time, energy, etc. to support it.  There's
been a shift in the commodity software markets (e.g., the DOS PC market)
such that most software revenues are actually the upgrades and not the
initial purchase (as it used to be when the market was in it's explosive
growth phase).  Some companies try to milk there users by releasing a
number of 'minor' upgrades per year for a somewhat reasonable price for any
given upgrade but they get you to get each upgrade.  Other companies go the
other direction and offer only fairly major upgrades one a once per year
(or two) upgrade schedule but charge nearly as much for the upgrade as you
can get the product for on the street.  The ones that piss me off the most
are these 'competitive upgrade' offers where loyal users have to pay *more*
for the upgrade than a user of some other product who decides to switch!
That's a great sign of not giving a crap about your customers. Ptui!

GeoWorks has a policy that's somewhere in the middle.  GeoWorks Ensemble
v1.2 was released about six months after 1.0 and it was a *free* upgrade to
every single registered user.  GeoWorks Pro was either a *free* upgrade
(for those who bought v1.0 or v1.2 late) or a 'nominal' cost upgrade (i.e.,
GeoWorks basically charged people cost) and came out a few months after
v1.2.  The POS series came out about the same time as Pro and there is a
very definite upgrade price schedule for upgrading from any of the POS
series to the full Pro package.  GeoWorks has (of course) not yet announced
v2.0 but there has certainly been assurances that the upgrade price for the
current users will be much better treatment than 'those other guys'.

As I have stated in this forum at least twice already, the SDK BETA
documentation is being provided at a price that is most likely losing money
for GeoWorks.  I would think that people would be a little more
appreciative that GeoWorks has made the technical documentation available
so early in the SDK cycle to anybody (no non-disclosures or any other such
non-sense).  When it was originally brought up to make electronic versions
of the documents available online, I personally brought this up with the
appropriate people at GeoWorks (and do recall that I'm am one of the
engineers not sales, not marketing, not whatever) and they put it on there
list of things to ponder.  I can tell you that one big argument is that of
time.  No matter how simple it may or may not be to publish the documents
electronically, it would still be taking time away from the technicaly
documentation staff who are working feverishly to add new information to
the next version of the documents, revise the documents do to errors and/or
less the excellent presentation, etc.  I certainly understand the plight of
those who can't afford the documentation but I'd have to agree that I would
certainly choose to spend these critical times on getting the documentation
more complete and ready for release and figure out how to deal with the
whole electronic distribution issue when there are a bit fewer pressures on
them.

If you feel that this is unfair, I'm truly sorry but when there are a great
many critical things to do in a very short amount of time non-critical
items will have to be put on hold.  No matter how much we all would like
the world to be closer to an ideal, there are realities to be faced in
these hard economic times.

Your last couple of statements lead me to believe that you are a supporter
of the Free Software Foundation and there GNU line of products and, most
relevantly, their philosophy.  I too support them and wish them the best of
luck and think that they have done and are doing an incredible job.  If you
believe that the various capabilities embodied by GEOS would better benefit
society as GNU style 'freeware' (or some other style :-) then please, by
all means, spend the hundred person work years of effort to create a 'free'
version.

In conclusion, let me apologize for my less than light tone in this post.
I'm trying to present some (different) possible perspectives on these
issues.  Anyways, thank's for expecting perfection from GeoWorks.

Hope this helps,
	John D. Mitchell
	johnm@cory.Berkeley.EDU

Disclaimer:	I'm an employee of GeoWorks.  My posts in this forum are
		strictly my own personal opinions and in no way do they
		reflect or bind GeoWorks in any way.  GeoWorks speaks for
		itself.
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.pcgeos