On Mon, 06 Jan 1997 09:12:55 -0500, Keith Meyer
>You should boycott it because it contains stuff that is freely availble
>on the net - there is no need to pay someone for it. Especially since
>all the stuff is developed by other people, who are receiving no
>compensation from the company selling this package. If it's not
>blatantly illegal, it's certainly unethical as hell...
Now I don't make a habit of defending other company's practices (heck,
I have enough trouble defending my own :-) ), and I must admit to not
having seen this package to evaluate the marketing on it, but there
are legitimate reasons for sellings CDs of material freely available
on the net. (Anyone seen the numerous Linux distributions to take
probably the most common example? How many people bought the demo
version of Descent, Doom, etc in stores instead of downloading it from
the net?)
Not everyone has a fast and free net connection, nor the time to go
hunt down all of the numerous little utilities and download them. (You
appear to, and can CHOOSE not to buy this thing, but others might not
have the same net.access and might like to buy this pack.)
If this upgrade pack (or whatever it's called) is not being
misrepresented as an official MicroProse product, and has some
indication that it is a collection of utilities written by third
parties for use with GP2, then I don't personally see the problem.
---Jim Sokoloff, Papyrus, but voicing my own opinion, and not the
official company line.