Thanks for doing that. The info you got was useful and, alas, somewhat
as expected.
> Well, we will stay on the list, watching for a change in the situation with
> X*Press. But until they have a change of heart, I suggest that the hobby
> programmers DONT BOTHER WITH IT! [...]
On the contrary, I'd say that there is quite a need here for some software
development. True, X*Press won't provide any support, but at least they
do not appear to have substantially changed the datastream format for their
basic service in a long time. I'm still using more or less the same basic
software (X*Change version 3) that I got in 1987, with the exception of
a file transfer disk that I got in 1989.
The two questions I asked, "how do they make money" and "would they get upset
by independent development", were of course related. If X*Press makes a
significant portion of its revenue from enhanced services, then by keeping
their datastream format private and discouraging independent development,
they can exercise some control over the enhanced services market. I doubt
that X*Press would get really upset if someone wrote code to take the basic
info service and turn it into netnews articles (not redistributing them,
of course). They might, however, get upset if someone wrote stock analysis
programs which somehow threatened to undercut their enhanced services market.
--
-Brian Smithson
Motorola Inc., Computer Group, Commercial Systems Division
10700 N. De Anza Boulevard, Cupertino, CA 95014 USA, (408)366-4104
brian@csd.mot.com, {apple | pyramid}!motcsd!brian