Author: enrico carrisco
Date: 11:56:01 12/10/04
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On December 10, 2004 at 04:24:46, Graham Banks wrote: >If people can download Arena as freeware from your site, what's the problem with >them downloading it elsewhere for free? >Surely it's all good for the Arena team as people are using your program and >obviously getting a lot of enjoyment from it. This is surely positive rather >than negative? They would most likely visit the Arena site for information and >other files as they become hooked. > >Regards, Graham. It's called "controlled distribution." Of course they want the program to be privately distributed amongst friends to gain popularity and become known -- it's cheap advertising. The same way all the "beta testers" provide information and ideas -- free development help. Then later, you pull the plug on all of it and can release a commercial product. Once that is the case, you don't want *ANY* public distribution of the older "freeware" versions. Not much harm if they are still being privately passed, but if they are appearing in any one place that allows for the mass public to acquire them, it is a bit hard to market the new "commercial" version. I don't see a huge problem with this, however, if the commercial product is feature-rich and all-around superior to the older freeware version. I'll tell you one thing, however. If Arena goes commercial in its next big revision and such a choice is said to be based of this incident, I can tell you it was a rather convenient deployment of an inevitable decision. There is no concern of any kind of "unmodified" distribution (private, public, etc.) unless there is a commercial interest on the back-end. This incident, one could say, flushed out the future. -elc.
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