CompuServe Messages

[Continued] I know these requires sound strict. But following these guidelines have made a LOT of people a lot of money over the years. Plus, they have distribution programs for authors (mass mailings to distributors, et al) and provide approved vendor and approved BBS listings. These are distributors and bbs' which have met ASP's standards for truly explaining what shareware is (ads suggesting that the $5 you spend for a program is all you'll have to pay are forbidden for instance). The ASP also lobbies Congress to protect shareware (the recent Software Rental Act, original contained the phrase, "Public Domain Shareware", an oxymoron. The ASP fought to change it (and succeeded, it was changed to Public Domain Software). You can get free legal advice from copyright attorneys (Lance Rose, Esq. is a fine one and is on CIS in the ASPFORUM) and even help distributing your product in the international market. Currently ASP is all IBM and Mac (they just started the Mac stuff) but supposedly the only reason Amiga authors aren't members is that no one has applied. Why Shareware over Commercial? In shareware, while you pay the costs of advertising and distribution (normally via disk vendors, user groups, bbs' and services like CIS), you also get ALL the money! Going retail, you only get a percentage of the profits, and someone else has full control over distribution, advertising and pricing. And I think it's safe to say, most of the people that would use your software have UseNet, FTP, etc. access and use it to get a lot of their software.