Showcase - SGI please respond!

[Michael Portuesi]

In article <1991Mar21.201915.23361 at gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca>, R. Munroe writes:
> With all the talk around this newsgroup re: Showcase, I think it would
> be mighty nice if someone from SGI would talk to the powers that be
> (read: lawyers) and respond as to whether or not Showcase will be available
> for ftp access.   Two weeks ago I posted an article regarding this issue 
> and I still haven't heard one way or another.

> Bob Munroe
> topix at utcs.utoronto.ca

By and large, most of the people from SGI that read this
newsgroup are members of its engineering community, and
we are here on a strictly voluntary basis.  We aren't in charge
of setting policies for marketing, distributing, or supporting
any of the systems and software that we offer.

Legal issues aside, it's not as simple as just putting the software
on sgi.sgi.com and posting a message to this newsgroup.  Showcase
is an SGI-supported product; this means that the Technical Assistance
Hotline will have to be prepared to deal with customers who can't
use FTP, either through their own unfamiliarity with the system,
(SGI: "Are you on Usenet or Internet?"  Customer: "What does that
mean?"), unknown system adminstration difficulties, or network
problems. We will have to service people who can't install the software
properly because a network error corrupted their copy.  We will have
to support customers who didn't get a copy of the user documentation
and call us over issues they might have resolved with the manual.

This support which is directly linked to FTP distribution does cost
us money, and also costs other customers in terms of slower
response time to their concerns.  Distribution through the normal
sales channels avoids these problems by making sure that everyone
gets the product in a consistent manner.

If the $100 price tag on the standard distribution bothers you,
consider that Showcase is comptetive with most of the drawing,
illustration and presentation packages in the PC and Mac
worlds, offers better performance than all of them, and costs
less than they do.  Also consider the support that I mentioned
above.  And if $100 still bothers you, simply wait for IRIX 4.0
which will include Showcase as part of the standard software
distribution.

While I personally have no idea whether or not we can and will
distribute Showcase via the net (though I personally support the
idea), I'm not surprised that there hasn't been an answer yet.
The Showcase people are hard at work adding new features
to the next release, not adding meetings with marketing,
sales, support, and legal staff to their schedule.

All statements in this article are my own, and not those of
Silicon Graphics.

m.
__
\/  Michael Portuesi   Silicon Graphics, Inc.   portuesi at sgi.com

"a knife, a fork, a bottle and a cork..."