Thorstenさんから送られてきた回答の原文。 ちなみに、質問文のほうは、あいかわらず、 「添削たのもう！」といったら添削してくれた、 筑波大学 工学システム学類に行ってる、 永田さん(e949031@jks.is.tsukuba.ac.jp)のものです。 Q4 What do you think is the approximate percentage of users who pay the registration fee ? It's really hard to tell. Probably less that 10%, maybe less than 1%. That doesn't sound very good, but 1% of a million people is better than 100% of ten people! If you look at the number of people running MacOS, it's something like 25 million people. If you could get 1% of them to register, you would be doing very well. I think if people use a piece of software every day, and they can afford it, they should pay for it. The author might not be able to afford to keep working on it if nobody registers - then there will be no more shareware. Q5 Under our impression, the definiton of Shareware is "a software created by the Developer to share its convenience with other people. The users pay the registration fee to the Developer to show their appreciation and respect." What do you think about or definition ? Is it ridiculous, or is it a dream ? That is a very good definition of shareware. I write DragThing because it is good to be able to create something that is enjoyed by as many people as possible. I don't write it to make money, although it is nice that it does. If I really wanted to make money, I would write software for Windows, or other bad things like that! :-) Q6 Do tell us if you or your company have a policy, philosophy or attitude toward creating and distributing shareware. I think shareware is the modern day equivalent of computer businesses like Apple, that were started in their parent's garages in the 1970s. Many big companies were formed from shareware roots, like ID software with Doom, and Aladdin with StuffIt. It's a great way to learn how to write software to a professional standard, and how to market and distribute it with very little financial risk. It's also a lot of fun. With the Internet, you can create something and instantly make it available to hundreds of thousands of people. That is very powerful! Finally, I'd just like to thank everybody who has registered their copy of DragThing in Japan - over half of my registrations come from Japan, much more than from the US or Europe. I hope people enjoy the new Japanese DragThing 2.1J - I wanted to do it as a 'thank you' to everybody there!

1998-08-12-WED

戻る