I thought that I would write and just let you know how things are going with
QCTerm, the free terminal emulator that we've been working on.

We're so late now (at least past my promised deadlines) that I let everybody
go on vacation rather than continue pounding away at it. A few more days
won't make any great difference. But we're very close -- and it shouldn't be
much longer. Personally, I'm getting more pleased with the thing.


Free Support for Free Software

As Bruce Toback mentioned last week, in another thread, he didn't know of any
company that provided free support for free software. But that's exactly what
we're going to try and do.

We have established a phone number that will dedicated solely to the support
of QCTerm. That number will be:

     (505) 526-4800

You won't need to write the number down. It will appear embedded in every
copy of QCTerm (but don't call the number yet, either; wait until the
emulator is ready to be released).

The support number will be a single-line number, disconnected from all of our
other commercial numbers. There will be no voice mail on the number. If you
get an answer, the person at this end (who will most likely be either Vickie
Kurtz, the author of the great majority of the code, or me) will be pleased
to answer your questions in as much detail as you like. If the number is
busy, please call back. If no one answers, we're simply not available. Please
call back -- later. We would like to restrict support calls to the four-hour
period 1:00PM to 5:00PM (Mountain Time, standard or daylight savings), Monday
through Friday. We will do our best to always have someone standing by during
those hours.

Having a single line means that the caller will always pay for the phone call
-- but that's all he or she will pay for. If the line is busy, or no one is
available, then the caller pays nothing. Under this arrangement, there will
be no interminable waits on hold. You either get immediate service -- or you
don't.

Support is a process that actually runs two ways. If we don't talk to you and
find out what's working well and what's not, we really can't improve the
product. I consider support to be so important to the design process,
especially early on, that we want to talk to you. And I don't want support to
degenerate to something completely misleading and frustrating -- where you
actually have to read the manuals :-).


Downloading

As Joe Geiser has pointed out, the mechanism that is allowing us to do this
is, of course, the rise of the internet. Prior to the internet, there was
always a minimum cost associated with the distribution of software and
support information. That has now pretty much disappeared. QCTerm will be
downloadable (ftp-able) from our web site, once we're ready to go with the
first rough-draft, pre-alpha, version 0.3 copy

But we also realize that some people will not have the capability to
download. For these sites, what we've decided to do is send such people
floppies and the current contents of the web pages in paper format -- but we
will charge for that service. The charge will be $100/year (not per copy of
QCTerm; the terminal can be given out to as many people within their
organization as they see fit). In the beginning, I would expect that the $100
should cover two to four mailings of QCTerm during the first year. As the
emulator becomes stabilized, less updates should occur.

We will accept only credit card payments for this service (American Express,
MasterCard, and Visa).

I will continue to let you know how things are going -- and when the first
primitive release of QCTerm will be available. Thanks much for you patience.

Wirt Atmar