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THE EDITOR'S TWO CENTS
By Richard Ramella
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PD P.D.Q.
     JUMPDISK is now "selling" public domain disks.
     Cost is $3 each in the U.S. and Canada, $4.50 each airmailed anywhere
else in the world. The cost includes the disk and mailing. There are no
additional charges. We have 69 disks available.
     See the article "PD DISKS $3 EACH: Bargain Bin."
     You ask yourself in amazement, How will poor little JUMPDISK make any
profit at this cost?
     It won't. That's the point.
     We hope we'll break even.
     I won't put on a show of false piety concerning so-called PD software.
We've published it in JUMPDISK. But it's always made me uneasy. And I want
to put it up front: We have begun offering PD for some self-serving reasons.
     -- We want JUMPDISK to be known as a source of original material. We
are paying for that original material -- both articles and programs. Yet,
we've received more than 200 reader letters urging us to make PD material
available. We want to satisfy this craving without making serious inroads on
the storage capacity of a given JUMPDISK issue, and also without leaving
ourselves open to the charge that we're simply selling that which was freely
given to the Amiga community or offered as shareware by good-spirited
programmers.
     After talking to many people -- some excellent shareware programmers
among them -- I'm convinced that $6 for PD disks is a fair price to charge
in cases where the producer is small -- an individual, a club, a store . . .
However, when mass production "software copying companies" get in the act, I
say six bucks is a major rip-off. Most important, it takes the work of
creative people without compensation. 
     I recently discovered one of these companies was selling JUMPDISK's
first issue as public domain software. It was also selling THE JUMPSTART
COLLECTION, which I copyrighted in 1985.
     I got on the phone fast and found I could order our own product for
$11! That's five bucks more than we charged for the first JUMPDISK.
     I got uncharacteristically steamed.
     That is the event that tipped me over the edge in favor of distributing
PD and shareware on a break-even basis.
     If you can get PD and shareware at no real cost, would you then please
consider contributions to the people who wrote the programs? I hope so. The
story I get is that contributions from users to creators of some of the best
shareware available for the Amiga -- have been abysmally low.
     If we don't support these people, they'll do something else with
their lives. And we'll be the losers.
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THANKS, ED SAAVEDRA
     If you're in the Chicago area, you might drop by MicroAge Computer
Store, 4445 W. 95th, Oak Lawn, IL 60453. There are Amigas. You'll also find
Ed Saavedra there.
     I'd like to thank Ed for the great help he gave JUMPDISK in amassing
the 69 PD disks we are now offering. He helped us fill out our collection by
copying what we needed and sending it UPS second day air to ensure it could
be catalogued before this issue was published.
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COMING ATTRACTIONS
     Next month is JUMPDISK's first birthday. We hope to make the issue
something special. There will be the usual guarantee of at least 10
original programs and 10 new articles. In addition, we will publish all
JUMPSTART COLLECTION programs that haven't seen light here already. Why not?
The lid is off them anyway.
     So far, the most technically adept work we have scheduled is a casino
version of Canfield Solitaire by David Upson, the author of that beautiful
Blackjack program that appeared in the April 1987 issue. We'll continue the
AmigaDOS Primer and Jumpstart Basic series, and we'll try to come up with
some meaty tutorials.

GET THAT ISSUE
     Any time now, AmigaWorld's special issue should be available. If you
didn't bite and send them their money in advance, we'll bet you'll find it
on the newsstand. Look for it to contain a lot of fundamental information
that will be useful to beginners. Tables, tutorials, stuff worth saving.

EGGHEAD
     Egghead, a software chain, doesn't carry Amiga software. Reader told us
he was informed by a sales clerk at a Los Angeles area Egghead store that
Egghead doesn't support the Amiga because Commodore gives Amiga buyers all
the software they will ever need. The reader wonders if that might be true?
     Nope.

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