Software, support, and warranties

[Wu Liu]

/--witr at rwwa.COM (Robert W. Withrow) said...
| In article <514 at bria> uunet!bria!mike writes:
| 
| >Providing a money back guarantee without restriction is equivalent to
| >hanging a sign on your front door stating ``No one is home; thieves
| >are welcome.''
| 
| If this were true companies like L.L. Bean and Land's End would not
| exist.  Since they do very profitably exist, it follows that this
| statement is false.
| 
| Now, before I get lots of posts saying the Shoes are not the same as
| Software, let me say that I agree.  But I don't think that they differ
| in a way that is significant to discussion a money-back guarantee,
| unless is is the fact that most software is full of flaws, and that no
| shoe buyer would accept an equivalently flawed product.
| 
| Actually, I think the analogy between Software and Shoes is apt;
| Another person wrote me something like ``a user could buy the
| (software), use it until it was (obsolete) and then demand a
| refund...'.  If you replace the word (software) with (pair of shoes)
| and the word (obsolete) with the word (worn out) you have the exact
| situation L.L Bean faces.  If they can be quite profitable under those
| circumstances, why can't MtXinu?
\--

Well, I do think there's one major difference between shoes and software
when it comes to money-back guarantees.  If you return a pair of shoes,
they're no longer in your possession.  More importantly, the store you
bought them from can be reasonably certain that you can't keep wearing
them after they've been returned.  How can software vendors tell if a
returned product isn't still in use by the returning party?