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Subject:Upgrading doesn't have to be immoral From:Gregory=Kushmerek%AcctgMed%FIN -at- HUMRES-SERVER -dot- NET -dot- TUFTS -dot- EDU Date:Thu, 18 Nov 1993 11:32:57 EST
It's been my experience that most companies allowing upgrades these
days do so knowing what exists out on the shelf already. Sometimes a
company would rather see someone using the product than get the full
retail price.
The best example I can come up with for this is IBM's release of OS/2 2.0.
IBM released the product on March 30, 1992, and made it policy that
anyone with any copy of OS/2 1.1 - 1.3 would receive 2.0 for free. Suddenly,
vendors were able to empty their warehouses of all those old OS/2 packages
that had been collecting dust.
IBM wanted to get as many registered users of the product as they could;
this gave them the power to twist companies' arms into developing for
that platform. Today IBM has version 2.1 out and there are several
million users (the most conservative I've heard is 2.5 million).
