At 1:29 PM 12/20/1996, Bill Frantz wrote:
At 11:52 AM -0800 12/20/96, Peter Hendrickson wrote:
If it's worthwhile having a backup processor around, then you just have to spend a little more to have backup software, too.
I thought your model was cheap processors and expensive software. I.e.,. The cost of the software is greater than the cost of the hardware. Sounds like more than just "a little more".
There's no reason why one software package would cost more than the machine. I was assuming you didn't need your whole software library to finish the report. I would expect software prices to drop because everybody using the software would be paying for it. I would also expect more kinds of software to become available. At any rate, I just don't see this as a major problem. Does anybody know how often processors break down these days? My guess is that it is less common than getting into a car accident and much less common than all the other factors that make reports late. If companies started metering software, then this problem pretty much evaporates.
If the old copy protection just worked, it would have been widely accepted.
Again, there is a complex infrastructure which offers the customer no obvious benefit.
The obvious benefit is that when you purchase software you don't have to pay for software development for the people who don't pay. Few people find this objectionable in principle. It is not out of the question for software vendors to sell two versions of the same software. One is the piracy-free version and the other is the copy-as-much-as-you-can version. I would expect the piracy-free version to be substantially cheaper. (Of course, it is not out of the question that piracy boosts sales by advertising the product. We haven't seen a good experiment for determining this.)
I disagree that copy protection would have been widely accepted, even had it worked smoothly. In fact, this scheme can be characterized as a scheme to make copy protection work.
Your characterization is accurate. Ignoring the particulars of this scheme, it would certainly be neat if people could sell software without it being pirated. Peter Hendrickson ph@netcom.com