Re: [MacPerl] Any shareware advice ?

["Paul J. Schinder" <schinder@pobox.com>]

At 5:41 AM -0400 6/30/99, Joshua Juran wrote:

>At 9:13 AM -0400 1999-06-27, Chris Nandor wrote:
> >At 1.27 -0400 1999.06.27, Max_Harper@veritasdgc.com wrote:
> >>     My plan is to write some shareware for the Mac.  The sort of stuff
> >>where you write some code and then charge a few dollars for a registration
> >>fee ?  Can anyone offer me any advice on this ?  If you know where there is
> >>a forum for this sort of thing, or if you have written some yourself, what
> >>were your experiences ?
> >
> >My advice is to give your software away, like most people in the Perl
> >community do.  :)
>
>This brings up a question that's been bugging me:  Why do we in the Mac
>community generally limit our gifts of free software to the domain of
>scripting?  Granted, some of the code I've seen posted here resembles C or
>Pascal Mac applications written in Perl, but it seems to me that if there's
>an easy way to distribute something without the source, we usually do it.
>There are the rare exceptions:  NewsWatcher, but its license has allowed
>exactly the result that RMS warned us about -- multiple competing
>closed-source offspring.  The free software on the Mac that I'm aware of is
>limited to ports of unix tools.  MacPerl is a godsend, of course, but what
>free, wide-audience Mac applications are there?  Glypha (a Joust
>play-alike) comes to mind (not sure about license), but we're talking a
>rare exception here.


Partly it's a cultural thing.  Partly is that it's harder to develop 
on MacOS than on Unix, for example, so people probably feel they 
should be compensated for their work. Partly it's a "what would I do 
with your source code anyway?" thing fromt the end user.  I've never 
downloaded the source for MacPerl, for example, because I don't have 
a C compiler installed on MacOS.  On Unix, where I always have had 
compilers, I've never downloaded a binary of perl, but always have 
built my own (even on Linux, where I'd much rather build my own than 
use an rpm).  If you can't use the source, you're less likely to want 
it or to know why you would even want to have it.

Looking at my application menu, I see 1 real commercial package 
(Eudora), several shareware, and several freeware (Netscape, MacPerl, 
uupc, MacTCPWatcher (I think)).  That doesn't count all the faceless 
stuff lurking in the background, like Norton Anti Virus etc.

>
>I'd be delighted if someone contradicted me on this.  In the meantime, I'm
>working on a number of projects, including an application framework (C++)
>to make things easier for developers who'd like to write Mac apps but
>haven't surmounted the learning curve.  I'd like to hear your comments on
>this.
>
>I'd also love to see gcc revived, but right now I'm afraid that's something
>of a pipe dream...


But if things work out as promised, by the end of this year or early 
next, you'll either get it from Apple or be able to install it 
easily.  Besides, it's not the lack of free compilers; MrC is now 
free and is rumored to be one of the best compilers available for 
PPC, and ETHZ used to have a free Modula 2 compiler (don't know if 
they still do).

>
>Josh
>
>--
>Joshua Juran                          Metamage Software Creations
>=)                                         Tools for Wizards
>wanderer@metamage.com
><http://www.metamage.com/>   * Creation at the highest state of the art *
>

-----
Paul J. Schinder
schinder@pobox.com


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