Fred, > "they will not be"??!? Of course I intend to reopen. > Calling it temporary was honest at one time, but then seemed necessary > to discourage "abandonware" vultures.
Glad to hear it as I have tried a couple of times contacting you through the website (info@xeno..) to see if you would be restarting sales. > > "projects" was a euphemism for PROBLEMS. Usually is... > I ran the company at a loss for a long time. Then, I lost my lease, > and had a crisis of storage space. Still do. I wonder how much stuff > I can take to VCFWest, . . . Will you be at VCFWest? I would love to meet some of the guys on the list and put faces to names... > My best friend died in 2014 > My mother died last year. My condolences. Deaths in the family are always very tough! > I now have two houses, with enough crap to fill three. > I always intended to re-open my programming business (and Lee > Felsenstein says that he still wants to go back and fix problems with > the Osborn design). Now that I could again, should I? YES! But I do understand your point and it is a point many authors of old SW make - I know other guys on this list who may still sell their old wares but it is kept quite as they do not want the associated headaches, troubles, work load, etc. > There are still more disk formats to add. > There are plenty of bugs to fix. > I now know ways to make it faster. > I never mastered "Installable File System" to be able to mount an alien > disk for active use, besides file transfer. > I want to add capability of working with disk images, besides physical > floppies. > I want to add flux transition board support, besides normal FDC. > But, disks needing to be converted are now finally fading away rapidly. Wow, that is a quite a wish list and I would think many people on this list would be very happy to see them implemented. > > "Free download"/shareware software relies on minimal support > requirement, and a larger volume than is realistic to expect for this > kind of software, unless somebody else is supporting you. > (Realistically, what does it take to pay the bills?) The most > successful model for this kind of software is to do it as a hobby with > an indulgent employer, or charge [PLENTY] to also do it as a data > recovery service operation. Retail sles of it won't pay for an office > and/or wage for support staff. I entirely agree on this point and as the years go by the volume gets smaller and smaller. That being said I've always advocated a minimal fee/no support model for old software that is no longer profitable to sell. That is, if you truly do not want a commercial enterprise, you make the SW available for purchase at a minimal fee (or no fee) and offer absolutely no support. That way the buyer gets a non-crippled licensed copy and support is based on the community (if there is any). > I may be too old, too tired, and too burned out to try. I hope not - and if you ever decide to sell XenoCopy-PC, XenoFonts, and/or XenoComm-Parallel you have at least one ready and willing customer! -Ali