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Subject: Re: Programmers - please distribute freeware version of your programs.

Author: Vincent Diepeveen

Date: 17:00:55 12/26/99

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You should install linux, redhat 6.1 is really a big with KDE
installed, over redhat 5.x.

And it's free too.




>On December 26, 1999 at 14:29:42, O. Veli wrote:
>	A couple of years ago, I decided to buy Rebel 8, after playing for a >while with
>the freeware Rebel Decade. I did not need it then, but I had the urge to buy it.
>I am still very happy with that decision. Decade led me to buy R8, I highly
>doubt that I would have bought it then if there were no Decade. I would like to
>thank Mr. Schroeder for providing Decade.
>	It is a simple, yet highly effective idea of Mr. Schroeder to provide a
>freeware version to invite potential customers to buy the full version. It is
>very odd that there are no freeware versions of top level programs. A recent PC
>World issue gave a list of 100 top programs, and the chess program was Chess-It.
>I tried that program a year or so ago, and there are a lot of better programs
>out there. A person who is not into chess, or chess computers as we are, thinks
>highly of GNU chess, the one with its own GUI (not a whole lot of people know of
>Winboard :((   ). S/he may think that Chess-It is a very good program.
>	On the other hand, if there were to be a master strength Fritz, Genius,
>Shredder, Nimzo, Junior, Hiarcs, or M-Chess Light, general public will have a
>much better freeware program to play with. Most of them will be happy with it,
>and some of them will want to buy the full version. This light version, if

There you said the big word: "some of them".
May i redefine that as: "a very few of them".

Why buy something is next year the current version you can get for free?

>distributed with a highly known magazine such as PC Magazine, PC World, Chip,
>MacWorld, could reach thousands of people.
>	I do not see anything that a programmer could lose in this. S/he may sell more
>copies. If not, at least the program will be known to more people. I do not know
>how hard it is to make a program play weaker, but I guestimate that it is not
>too much work. Maybe it is hard to get the attention of magazine editor, but we
>can break that with a couple of e-mails. I mentioned Decade and MacChess to some
>magazines, but did not get a reply.



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