CompuServe Messages

John, One thing that seems to happen in the case where a PD offering comes close to or surpasses the commercial offerings, is that the commercial offerings will start getting better. A good example, that I am quite familiar with, is in the area of terminal programs. MaxiComm and Online! were the first two commercial examples that I am aware of, and at the time, they were nothing short of pitiful. Aterm surpassed them by orders of magnitude (if for no other reason than that it actually worked). I can remember conversations with the author of Online!, wherein he accused me of trying to kill their effort by making Aterm too good. My position, of course, was that it wasn't 'too good', but that his program was buggy, unreliable, lacked features, and hogged resources. The net result? He followed my recommendation that he improve his program. So, while it is understandable that a magazine try not to anger their advertisers, I cannot see that it does the industry (vendors or buyers) any good at all. -larry