RE: Issues with guideline 4.2

I very strongly disagree with the notion that these things must be free in order to be deemed accessible.  I do not see how limiting the ability of the producer to make a profit from his work will benefit the consumer.  In the medium to long term, it will only result in less valuable products being released.  The market is so competitive now that almost all web software is free anyway and producers get their revenue by other means.  Still, there may be instances where software is so costly to develop and so valuable to the consumer that it will require a licensing fee to make it worthwhile for the producer to develop the product.

Rob

P.S.  Sorry for the double post Gregg.

-----Original Message-----
From:   Gregg Vanderheiden [mailto:gv@trace.wisc.edu]
Sent:   Sun 7/25/2004 7:15 PM
To:     'Lee Roberts'; 'Web Content Guidelines'
Cc:    
Subject:        RE: Issues with guideline 4.2


Lee writes:
Personally I like the requirement of "freely".  It implies
that like IE, Opera, Netscape, Mozilla, and others the AT
is free.

That is what I was thinking until I realized that if IE is part of OS then
it isn't free.   I know there was a big legal battle about this... but if
you can browse directly off of windows explorer then...   

Opera isn't free either if you need features in advanced version.  But basic
one is.
That was all that was making me think about perhaps not "freely".   But I
would like Free.

Gregg

 -- ------------------------------
Gregg C Vanderheiden Ph.D.
Professor - Ind. Engr. & BioMed Engr.
Director - Trace R & D Center
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Received on Monday, 26 July 2004 09:22:48 UTC