Wow! This month went by so fast. Lot's of things going on here on the ConSorTium. Due to an overwhelming response from SysOps, RoAnn decided she needed to drop the price of Door World Magazine by $10.00. I was in a good mood at the time and gave her complete rights to the software I wrote for the magazine which let her drop the price another $5.00. So as of this month you can purchase Door World Magazine for only $10.00 a year! What a deal. This will only make Door World expand and become more popular! I also noticed a new FREE BBS magazine floating around. I checked it out the other day and it's pretty cool. If imitation is the greatest form of flattery then I guess Door World Magazine was a good idea. It's the free thing that bothers me. What are these guys independently wealthy or what's the story? I wish I had the time every month to devote to writing games or Door World stuff just to give them away. Oh well, this is work so I had better get at it. Speaking of free stuff. I have been reading a lot of messages in the echos this month about freeware, shareware and crippleware. If we are being honest about it, I think we could safely say that there is MAJOR piracy going on in the computer world. I almost wish they didn't call it piracy, because for a lot of folks the word piracy brings up a long ago romantic, adventurous spirit that stealing software in the modern era just doesn't compare to. Or maybe it does for some, who knows... Let me tell you about my own experience as a door author. A few years ago after I wrote my first little door called BUSTED, I sent it out into the BBS world. I received all kinds of favorable responses from SysOps who checked it out. Hey, this is cool I thought. The sysops who responded wanted this changed or this added. I decided to do some work on the door and sent it back out for $5.00 or $10.00, I can't remember exactly. The door went out as Shareware with only a very small message at the end indicating it was not registered. I think I received two checks in the mail for the door over the next three months. Yes, I was a bit disappointed. After all the favorable responses, I had started dreaming about my yacht! I didn't give up. I decided I needed to write something bigger and better. Who-Dunit the door game was born. Again, this door was a repeat of my experience with busted. I thought it was a fun game and received a lot of nice comments on it but never any money! Both doors were fully functional and Who-Dunit was one of the first REAL time interactive multinode doors out there. (real time meaning you can play against or with other players who are on line on a multinode BBS system). Ok, call me naive but I figured the lack of registrations was because the doors I had written were just not good enough for sysops to pay for. I decided something MAJOR had to be done. Terra-Firma was born. I loved to play space type games against other players on my local BBS's and decided to ask folks what they were looking for. Terra-Firma turned into a huge 10,000 sector game with REAL time play. I sent Terra out and received a LOT of enthusiastic responses. Sysops and players seemed to like to be able to ask for something they wanted to see in the game, appear in the next version. But alas, the registrations were just not coming in. I decided to give up door programming a few years ago. I sent out messages to that effect in the Fido echos and let people know that if they wanted a registered version of my doors they could call my BBS for the next few months and get them for FREE. After which time I would shut down my BBS and quit. Well a strange thing happened. Hundreds and hundreds of call started coming in to my computer. In fact, I used to sit there in amazement as one call came right in after another. What the hell! Up until this time I had never crippled any features in my games. So the only thing I could surmise from all this was that LOTS of sysops had been running Terra-Firma and my other games, but because they didn't have to register them to get the special features they didn't. I had checked other doors and had noticed that some door authors were keeping back special features until registered. I decided to have another go at this door author thing. I re-coded my doors to cripple some of the features in the games. I left them quite playable, just crippled some of the more advanced options. I re-wrote the registration code so that the FREE keys everyone had downloaded would not work with the next version. I didn't feel bad about this, as I had decided to quit anyway and folks knew when they were getting keys from my BBS that the version they were getting the key for was my last version of Terra-firma. Guess what. Not long after I sent out the new version of Terra-Firma and Who-Dunit, registrations started coming in. I could be wrong, but being human myself, I know that sometimes folks need a little prodding to do the correct thing. I have been tempted myself to continue using a non-crippled software product. I won't do it and never will, but I have been tempted! New subject. Of late I have been in contact with a Mr. Bob Dalton, who is going to be marketing some of my doors at the BBSCON convention out in Colorado. I have never been to a BBS convention but can imagine it would be a heck of a lot of fun. I have been talking to my wife about going out but it's a long trip from MA, so I would have to fly. I hate to fly! Never mind the fact that we just bought a new house and all the expenses to go with it. I may have to wait another year. I have been saying this now for about three years! If I do go, I'll be the good looking guy with the N.U.G.I. ConSorTium SoftWare T-shirt on. My wife will be wearing one with Terra-Firma on the front and Quantum Jump on the back. Hey, FREE advertising, it's almost as good as Door World Magazine! It would be a great thing to meet in person all the folks who like my door games and maybe even the ones who don't! Meeting and talking with other door authors would also be a great time. Many are the hours I have spent all by myself up in my computer room wishing I had another programmer around to help me out or to just throw ideas around. I know these other guys must feel the same way. If you can make it to the convention then go. It may prove to be a great time and getting together for beer afterward sounds even better! Dave Wendling 1:321/227 BBS 413.684.0145 nugicon@delphi.com þ