ess riches.  Of course, their product
is sold on an "as-is" basis.  Worse, they may have a real junker, bug-ridden,
useless, which they give away to unsuspecting recipients.  Or they may convince
some company with questionable ethics, if any at all, that their product is a
winner and that it will make millions.	Due to our human tendency to make
sweeping generalities because of single bad experiences, many of the good guys
are suffering and the worth of their product is reduced accordingly.

  Also disturbing is the pricing scheme of second-rate user-supported products.
Paying $25 to $75 for outstanding software, with anywhere from 20 to 40 pages of
documentation is one thing.  But asking the same price for a product which took
a tenth of the time to develop and has, at best, two to three pages of
hard-to-read, misspelled instructions is hard to swallow.  Many PC users are
getting tired of the "suggested contribution" scheme.  Please do not suggest any
amount unless you fully intend to support the users, notify them of new
releases, and provide some problem-resolution help for legitimate bugs.



JUNKWARE IDENTIFICATION

  Bulletin Board System Operators are making untold contributions to the
advancement of Personal Computing; we owe them much gratitude.	Remember, most
of them don't have to do it.  Let us all use public BBSs to spread the word on
JUNKWARE packages.  Avery simple and standardized way would be to leave either
.DOC or .TXT files with a JUNKxxxx name.  Criteria for qualifying as JUNKWARE
could be (but are not limited to):

  1.  Totally undocumented products, unless, of course, their purpose(s) are
simple and self-explanatory.  Many programs, for example, require a specific
level of the Operating System to operate, but do not docu- ment this fact.
Mismatched OS levels can actually cause damage to your precious data.

  2.  Products which have any kind of operational problems or do not perform as
documented.

  3.  Products which one feels are grossly overpriced based on the function they
perform or the quality of their documentation.

  4.  Products which are obvious copies of others, especially commercial
packages which are barely hidden replicas of freely available systems.	Yes,
unethical people will take public domain software, pretty it up a little, and
sell it for an obscene profit.

  5.  For the silent, honest minority, programs which are obviously pirated
copies of legitimate packages.	Piracy is a moral and ethical issue much more
than a legal one.

  6.  Programs/packages/systems whose author/vendor is unwilling to support or
fix, especially commercial products.

  7.  "Sabotage" software whose only purpose is to clobber your system in one
way or another (ie, format your disk, lockup your system, or other undesirable
side-effects).

CONCLUSION

  I believe that we microcomputer users can enforce some "code of ethics" within
our own ranks and provide an invaluable service to others like us and, to an
even larger extent, to the consumer community as a whole.  The JUNKWARE concept,
I believe, will help us identify much of the worthless products being sold or
even given away.  As a result, the quality of both commercial and public-domain
software will have to improve if the vendor wishes to remain in business or if
the author wants a good reputation.  Collectively, I feel we are much better
software reviewers than most professionals, whose main incentive is to get the
article out on time before the publishing deadline.

  Those of you agreeing with my views may feel free to leave messages on BBSs or
contact me directly via mail:

Dan Moore
Arvin Industries
1531 13th St.
Columbus, IN 47201
(812) 379-3426 8 to 5 EDT

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