CompuServe Messages

Martin, The point is more that _commercial_ software hasn't necessarily followed the rules, which has caused problems when upgrading the OS, and there's really no excuse for that. Anyone who's developing commerial software for the Amiga has the responsibility to be a registered developer with Commodore (IMHO) and Commodore has been pretty good about making sure that registered developers _do_ have access to the available documentation. Vic's absolutely right, except that unfortunately his opinion is a bit more idealistic than the market can bear. As for "amateur" programs breaking due to changes in the OS environment, I feel that that can't be helped – it's just a negative side effect of the evolutionary process. Yes, I am making a distinction between "commercial" software being "professional" and "freely-distributable" software being "amateur". I'm not saying that this distinction means that one class of software is inherently _better_ than the other. In fact, there's some wonderful and well-written "fd" software and some absolutely horrible commercial software available. However, as a consumer, I feel I have a right to some degree of protection for my investment in commercial software. I don't feel that I have the same rights concerning freely-distributable software – it's much more of a gray area. Shareware complicates this dichotomy, but just a bit. I consider "shareware" whose terms are "if you use this program you are obligated to pay me for it" in the "commercial" category, which also implies the same responsibilities on the authors of such shareware. Other "shareware" whose terms are more liberal, such as "you can use this if you want, and you can pay me $$$ if you want to" falls more in the second category. (again, IMHO) I wonder how many flames this is gonna generate! <grin> …BobR