Shareware registration service

[weirdami]

So, people keep posting about wanting to register some shareware software but the authors don't reply so they can't register. I suggest that amiga.org set up some kind of registration clearing house type deal where shareware software programmers that no longer want to deal with handling registrations of their old software can hand the responsibility over to Wayne, et al.. AO can negotiate to take a cut of the registration fees or even to take all the money if some authors don't really care anymore. That way, AO can have some extra money coming in for the kitty and people can stop complaining and talking about "abandonware".

[weirdami]

...I think AO would be a reliable and trustworthy source to sell the programs once they've been found.

And, keeping the kitty fed would serve as a kind of incentive to keep it going. Keeping the site going might also encourage users to find programmers. I also thing that if a programmer of old stuff sees the service that they might even just turn over registration without having to be tracked down. Same goes for programmers of current shareware if they move on to other things.

I don't know if AO should be in the business of taking registrations for stuff that's still being supported, though. Even though that'd probably be a more consistent source of commissioned income. Might be too much to handle, on top of site maintenence. (Interesting side business for someone, though: a service for shareware guys who want to spend time programming, not dealing with registration hassles.)

[weirdami]

@stopthegop

People are already downloading. That's why they want to register.

[weirdami]

I suppose SASG would fall into this category as well, but they've only had the same 4 products for as long as I can remember.

When I first had the idea for a website listing fan-made episodes of MST3K (see sig), I was online looking for websites of individual producers and found only a few. Then, I had the idea, but soon found someone else had the same idea so I didn't bother. A year later (and still to this day) his site says "please send information about your projects" and he has no more listed than I had found in my initial search. So, I started my own website and the list is mega large now because I did an active search for projects and contacted people and eventually people would just contact me.

This anecdote could be applied to the SASG situation. Except, since there is money involved, the good will of AO might be neccessary to get the authors of shareware to even respond because they would be less likely to think some nut-case  was trying to rip them off.

[weirdami]

:afro:. It's the new :bump:.