Re: buying blind (was: Frame 6.0 - Full version of Acrobat?)

[jeremy@xxxxxxxxx (Jeremy H. Griffith)]

On Wed, 22 Mar 2000 17:55:40 -0500, William Swallow <William.Swallow@aptissoftware.com> wrote:

>I know you asked for off-list requests but this is more of a question that
>others should consider as well. I don't mean to put you on the spot here, as
>this applies to any software for any platform.
>
>I don't understand why I (the hypothetical I) should commit myself to buying
>a product that has never been manufactured for my platform. 

Who asked you to???  We sure didn't!  We just wanted to get an idea of
how many people were *interested*, so we could decide on a rational
basis how beneficial such an effort would be for the group at large.

Personally, I'd like to see us do the Mac and UNIX ports.  In fact,
the original Mif2Go was designed and built on SunOS... but nobody
ever ordered the Sun version, so we dropped it four years ago.  We
need hard numbers to justify the six-figure investment in development
the ports would take...  Maybe your bean counters go on your desires,
but mine don't.  Dammit.  ;-)  We have to weigh the cost/benefit for
each project (and we have many lined up) to decide which to do next.

If you consider, say, whether a Mac port would be a better thing to
do than a full-scale XML-based portable Help system with a freeware
viewer, at the same cost, you may get some feel for this process...

So far, the results are rather bleak.  Two requests each for Mac and
Solaris, out of 2000 list members, isn't going to look like serious
demand, even if one of them *did* want 15 Sun licenses...  The polls
are still open at <port@omsys.com>, if anyone else wants to register
a request for Mac or UNIX.  And for Pete's sake, you will *not* incur
any obligation to purchase, if or when we actually do them...

-- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc.
  (jeremy@omsys.com)  http://www.omsys.com/

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