ShowCase distribution

[Michael Portuesi]

In article <mg.669694950 at godzilla>, Mike Gigante writes:
> Having said this, I can't see the difference b/n showcase and the image
> conversion tools that are already on sgi.com - both are binaries for SGI
> machines, useful to customers and free.

There is a big difference between Showcase and software
such as image tools and gman already on sgi.com.  The former are
quick programs written by our engineering and R&D staff that
we thought people might like to use.  They are not officially SGI
supported products.  We don't ship them with our machines.
You don't need an IRIX maintenance license to get them.

Showcase is a commercial product.  Somewhere around a million
dollars was spent polishing, documenting, marketing, and
producing the product so that it could be of commercial quality.
It comes as part of the standard IRIX software distribution
with new machines.  It has a very useful user's manual that
cannot be included with a network distribution.  If it doesn't
work, we promise to help you make it work, or fix it if it is broken.
We don't make that promise for the other software which is
on sgi.sgi.com.

The fact that we chose to bundle the software with our standard
IRIX distribution rather than selling it as a separate option is a
reflection of Showcase's importance to our users as a productivity
tool, not our declaration of it as "free" software. 

We're sorry if $100 is too much to pay, or an impossible
paperwork challenge if you need Showcase in the interim.
But it does cost us money to package and distribute
each copy of Showcase apart from our standard software
releases.  We'd all like to give you IRIS upgrades for free
if we could, but we wouldn't be in business for long if we
did.

m.
__
\/  Michael Portuesi   Silicon Graphics, Inc.   portuesi at sgi.com

"a knife, a fork, a bottle and a cork..."