>
>Yes, I did think this through before posting. I see, from what has been
>posted to the list, that very few people are actually purchasing the ATA
>driver because they need it, but solely to pay Paul for his efforts.
>That's fine, really. He deserves to get something for the effort.
>
>I just can't see it as altruistic in the slightest. He knows you'll all
>pay for it whether you need it or not, and he's milking you all for what
>he can get. This is a problem with any fanatic user base. The laws of
>supply/demand/need don't apply. I'm just sorry to see that greed does.
>
>It's a shame, because as I said, it could have become ubiquitous, a true
>testament to community spirit, but now it won't. I honestly don't care
>whether Paul is discouraged or not, though it's quite clear from the
>reaction here that his ego's gotten quite the boost from this. He's
>getting people pledging to send him money. One voice standing out from
>the crowd shouldn't harm any but the most fragile ego.
>
>If you'll all pay him $50-75, good luck to you. Good luck to him, it's
>just sad to see a great program turn into a luxury item. Let's just hope
>that Hiroshi doesn't take the lead and jack up his price for the WLAN
>driver since it'll be proven that people will pay anything.
This is out of line, in my view. To suggest that you know Paul's motives
for what he charges seems a bit presumptuous. Paul has been working on
this project for years and the on a scale of 1-10 for degree of
difficulty, this is a 9! Paul, without having sufficient resources to
know how the Newton driver hooks are written, is basically hacking his
way through code to write this and do something that the Newton was never
intended to do. The ATA cards are extremely different from linear cards
in the way they organize data. If someone at Apple did this with all the
knowledge of how the Newton source code works, it would be a major
project. For a college student to be doing this on his own, with no
support but encouragement from the rest of us, is nothing short of
amazing. He most definitely deserves what he is asking. As for whether
anyone will pay this, that totally depends on if the drivers are worth it
to the purchaser. If they are not, don't buy it (and don't bitch,
either). That they are being written at all (and they that they work) is
remarkable for a dead platform. The audience for Paul's work is only
about 1000 people and a 1-5% rate of buyers would be about what he can
expect. At most, he will net $1-2000 for years of effort. Not much, in
my opinion.
Mark Ross
markr13_at_comcast.net
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