Re: Supply and Demand

[Mitch Stone <mstone@vc.net>]

  In reply to Norm's message sent 11/27/97 1:26 PM:
  
  >     The OS leveraging aside???  It's impossible to remove that fact
  >from the argument, it's what M$ is all about.
  
  Correct me if I am wrong, but before there was leveraging, there was 
  dumping. Dumping began in August, 1996 with the release of MSIE 3.0. 
  Leveraging began in earnest this year with MSIE 4.0.
  
  >     That said I don't think it's fair to blame Netscape for society's
  >poor ethics when it comes to registering software, and at the time
  >almost every other browser was also available as a free download too.  
  >But the fact *IS* that Netscape's browser is NOT free, so I'd say
  >people's penchant for not registering software is a matter for their
  >own conscience not Netscape's.  Would you feel better if Netscape had
  >their lawyers chasing everyone who uses it without registering just
  >like M$ would??
  
  When you say "every other browser," which ones do you mean? Navigator is 
  free to essentially everyone outside of corporate environments. If 
  Netscape was serious about collecting registration fees, they could 
  employ any one of several time-tested methods of distributing demo or 
  time-limited versions. At this stage, they simply cannot afford to hobble 
  the downloaded versions of Navigator, and I can certainly understand why. 
  But this doesn't explain why they were doing the same thing three years 
  ago.
  
  >     I'm not saying Netscape was without sin.  I do believe that at the
  >time Netscape was trying to use their marketshare to forge their own
  >standards, but IMO that's a far cry from trying to steal content like
  >M$ will.
  
  The purpose here is not to assign blame, not especially to Netscape, a 
  company fighting for its life. Instead, I am asked rhetorical questions 
  intended to get at the question "when is dumping not dumping?"
  
     Mitch Stone
  +---
     ...it would have made a dreadfully ugly child, but it makes 
     rather a handsome pig, I think. --- Lewis Carroll
  
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