On Wednesday, November 27, 2002, at 01:36 PM, Peter Cameron wrote:
>
> John Acuff <jacuff1_at_earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> I mean, if the guy says he's not going to make any
>> more of them, what would be the loss to him? It
>> certainly wouldn't be any money out of his pocket.
>> Or am I missing something here?
>
> David put a lot of time and effort into the design and production
> of the SER-001 and offered probably the best technical support
> available, even refining the product for the second run. The design is
> his property and I'm sure he hasn't made a lot of money on the
> project. If he were to drop it into the public domain anyone could
> start producing knock-ofs and selling them in quantity. If these
> happened to be shoddy reproductions it could affect the reputation of
> David's product and his ability to design and sell other hardware to
> the Newton community.
> We had our chance to buy SER-001 cards. It's now over. Possibly
> enough advance orders might persuade David to do another run, but as
> he said, he's moved on to other projects.
>
Well, I'm not saying he should just give away the info, but I also
think that if someone were willing to pay a fee for the information, in
exchange for the right to use it to build one of these for their own
use, that might be an option. I just hate the idea that those of us who
might need or want one of these in the future should be locked out of
the opportunity. The way that announcement was worded, it sounds pretty
much a done deal to me. What if my interlink port on my 2100 goes bad
next month? Do I just forget about it and buy another Newt? I guess if
the packages that I download aren't too big to fit on my 120, I can
always download to it, then beam it to my 2100. But that won't help me
with larger packages. And not everyone has a spare Newt laying around
to do this with. And what about new users who would want one of these?
I just think this is too good an idea just to be left to rot. Maybe he
could find someone who would be willing to mass produce some of these
and pay him a royalty on each sale? At least I am trying to come up
with some ideas, and not just say, "oh well". If anybody else has any
constructive ideas, I'd love to hear them.
John
"Got Newt!"
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