[849] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Software Sales via e-mail
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lyle Seaman)
Tue Jun 18 16:47:44 1991
From: lws@capybara.comm.wang.com (Lyle Seaman)
To: emv@ox.com, lws@capybara.comm.wang.com
Cc: com-priv@psi.com, dcm@teal.csn.org, jqj@duff.uoregon.edu
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 91 15:46:30 EDT
jqj writes:
>I've been receiving product delivered by email or offered for anon ftp
>from cisco for years.
and Ed Vielmetti writes:
>Where have you been? apple has sent out System 7.0 from ftp.apple.com,
>you can pick up new Annex load images and cisco images over the net,
>telebit releases beta netblazer images for ftp, and i'm sure with
>a little more poking you could find more.
but then comments that these are only provided to existing customers...
Which is precisely the point. A number of corporations provide customer
support over the net, whether the Internet or simply from UUNET, and I
can name a lot that Ed left out. But that's not using electronic media
as the *sole* means of interaction with a customer. The case of software
sales is the first instance that I've seen (not necessarily _the_ _first_,
you understand) of a case where the total customer/vendor relationship
might exist without a scrap of paper being involved.
It's possible that some network services provider has already done this,
but I don't know of any that don't send paper bills, and expect checks
as payment.
Ed, it seems like your interests should be setting you up to be the next
example, eh?
stev@ftp.com writes:
[ something to the effect of ftp versus e-mail as the delivery mechanism ]
In this case, ftp is certainly reasonable, as the product is Internet-specific.
But I think that mailing a copy of the executable to someone is more consistent
with the traditional notion of "shipping" a product, though a properly
constructed (logging, properly authenticating, etc) FTP server would be more
effective wrt establishing receipt of product for the sake of the accountants.
It's an interesting problem, and those organizations which haven't worked out
how to deal with it are going to be left in the dust...
Lyle Wang lws@capybara.comm.wang.com
508 967 2322 Lowell, MA, USA .sig out of order
