Re: Is genealogy software non-profitable?
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In reply to:
Is genealogy software non-profitable?
5/28/00
Barry said, very astutely:
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Take the offer to move to TMG, begs the question. "What guarantees have I that transferring will solve the longevity of my Family History files?" Will TMG be facing this same dilemma sometime in the future? I will also have to learn, yet again how to use the new software.
Ask yourselves this!
Is there a viable market for any 'High Quality' genealogy software when most people will be more than satisfied with the Free software provided by The Church of the Latter Day Saints and many other freely available sources of software? . . . . . . .
We live in a commercial world driven almost entirely by profit. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The obvious position is to wait and see. The offer from TMG is available until the end of this year. Many things will have happened by then. Meanwhile, I can enjoy reading the comments of all on this board and that of TMG.
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Barry, I share your concerns, and I have already engaged in private e-mail discussions on this matter with friends using UFT for their genealogy. The very real question about the long-term viability, availability, and support of any of the more sophisticated and complicated computer genealogy programs raises the question of whether a switch soon from UFT to ???, followed by laborious cleanup, will have to be followed soon by another, then another, etc. This can support an argument that we ought to switch soon all the way back to PAF, the most popular genealogy computer genealogy program. I have never used it, but I understand that it is somewhat primitive in comparison with, for example, UFT and TMG. However, being backed by the LDS church, having a huge base of users, being technically somewhat simple, and being available free, its long-term viability is probably more assured than is the case for more complicated commercial programs such as UFT and TMG. Howard Nurse and Bob Velke are very honorable men and merchants, devoted to the hobby and profession of genealogy through operation of small companies. However, the commercial world today is characterized by big companies taking over small companies, such as Commsoft, in strategies that the little companies sometimes cannot resist. Small business owners may perceive that it is commercially futile for them to try to compete with large companies. Also, the commercial game of discount and rebate sometimes makes programs available at zero net cost, and no small company can compete and survive in such a market place. Many of us are willing to pay reasonable prices for excellent software and its upgrades, considering the time and effort we put into genealogy to get the features and output we want, but many newcomers will buy programs based on price alone. The latter is destructive to the viability of better and more costly programs.
Wayne