Del Johnson wrote:
The downside is that nobody is going to put in a great effort to create new
software when the competition is free. Look how development has slowed down
on TheSky. I would rather pay and get a great product.

Are you sure the development has slowed down for that reason, and not
something else--such as that TheSky has matured sufficiently?

TheSky (Level IV, or whatever the highest level is) is sufficiently
expensive that I doubt that Cartes du Ciel is much competition. If
you are the sort that waited this long, and is only now downloading
CdC, I don't think you'd have bought TheSky, anyway. (Obviously, I
don't mean you personally, Del!)

I originally set up my $10 registration for PleiadAtlas for precisely
this reason--because I did not want to undercut other astronomy
software writers for the Palm. I never did it for the money; if I had,
I'd be sorely disappointed. If I had it all to do over again, I
probably would just make it freeware. I don't think that doing so
would affect Planetarium or 2Sky very much at all.

Brian Tung
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
The PleiadAtlas Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/pleiadatlas/
My Own Personal FAQ (SAA) at http://astro.isi.edu/reference/faq.txt