Re: Ancient wares and present values

[CUTblakeney@home.com (Jeff Blakeney)]

On Tue, 04 Jul 2000 06:54:31 GMT, "Paul Grammens" <grammens@svn.net>
wrote:

>any programmer who is trying to make money writing for the Apple II platform
>has bigger problems than piracy. Maybe they think they'd be making big bucks
>if it weren't for all them pirates, but it just isn't so.

People who create something have every right to do what they want with
their creation no matter what it was created for.  I will be selling
an e-mail client for the Apple IIgs in the not too distant future.
Why should I not be allowed to try and make a few bucks from my work?
I know I'm not going to make a lot of money and I'm certainly not
going to make a living writing Apple II software but there is no
reason why I can't make some money.  Heck, if I can get 100-150 people
to buy my program, and I'm sure there are more than that number of
Apple IIgs users, that would cover most, if not all of my KFest
registration next year.  Even making that much, and it isn't very
likely I will, my return on my time will be very small but it would
still be nice to have.  Every little bit helps.

>As far as the "value" of Apple II hardware or software, I can get all I can
>carry at Goodwill for a few dollars, if I can catch them before they
>automatically toss it.  To everyone but us, it's worthless, and even we
>don't have room for anything but a few choice pieces.  To the rest of the
>world, it's about as valuable as yesterday's TV schedule.

If it has value to you then you should be willing to pay something for
it.  Why do you think people are spending $100 US to get a hard drive
for their system or $200 US for an accelerator card?  Because they
value the system and are willing to pay for it.  If they are willing
to spend the time, effort and cash to get the hardware they want, why
shouldn't they be willing to do the same with software?  Why must so
many people try to justify pirating software?

If they are willing to pirate older software than they are only a tiny
little step away from pirating new software.

>If you want to waste your time (you know the value of it better than I)
>bleating about the piracy of ancient software (I agree with you on anything
>that is actually still being sold)  -shrug- I can't stop you, but I'm going
>to start filtering out all of you broken records.  Still,  I think it's a
>pity that any newcomer has to wade through all your crap to find out how to
>get binscii to work.

I've said it many times in the past, I don't say anything about this
sort of stuff except to reply to other people's posts about illegal
activity.  I'd be much happier trying to help people to get BINscii to
work rather than having to point out that the FTP sites they were
pointed to are illegally distributing software or explaining why
people's arguments that it is perfectly legal to be doing this is
false.

+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Jeff Blakeney - Dean of the Apple II University in A2Pro on Delphi     |
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