Please excuse what may be a waste of bandwidth, but I was asked again this
morning if we would sell, license, or share the code we're putting together
for QCTerm. This has been a surprisingly common request.
Rather than continue to disappoint people, the answer is unfortunately, no.
And that no will remain the same no, at any price. We consider QCTerm to be as
proprietary as any product we've ever produced, even though we're distributing
it at no charge.
I estimate that by the time we're done, we will have spent a quarter million
dollars in putting QCTerm together. At the moment, we've spent about $100K on
the basic terminal emulator portion, and that was almost exactly my original
estimate. However, a great deal more functionality is planned for QCTerm, and
almost all of that functionality will be released to everyone, at no charge
(the portion you won't see is all related to QueryCalc, thus you won't be
missing anything that you would otherwise think you would need if you're not a
customer).
There are good things coming. Ideally, you will begin to see some of this
material by late summer. But to insure their arrival, we must stay on track
and on focus.
Several people has asked how we intend on ever making any money on a free
product. One answer is: we plan on making it up in volume. A more serious
answer is: that isn't perfectly clear to me either; it's more a matter of
faith, as many things are in the HP3000 world.
Nonetheless, after investing this kind of effort into the product, it is our
intention to maintain total control of the product, for several reasons: I do
not want to see a number of dialectal versions of the product in the
marketplace, competing with one another. Further, we have a long-term vision
for what a terminal for the HP3000 can become, and we want to see that vision
through to the end. The only way to insure these goals are met is to maintain
strict control.
As I said, this may be a waste of bandwidth, but I do not enjoy disappointing
anyone. The answer must remain "no" for all requests, now and in the future.
However, that shouldn't be a surprise. It is very likely to be the same answer
you would get from Netscape if you were to ask for the source code to their
browser -- and the same economic model applies to them as it does to us.
Wirt Atmar
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