Hi there,

[We hope you'll forgive the intrusion of company information, but this message is really very un-corporate.]

It's with great pleasure that we announce that in celebration of the fifth birthday of Half-Baked Software Inc., we have decided that for the whole of the month of May 2004, we will give all the income received from purchases of Hot Potatoes and Quandary licences directly to charity. The University of Victoria has agreed to waive its royalty percentage, we will waive ours, and the company will cover ongoing costs out of its savings, so every penny of the software licence fee will go directly to charity. If you buy a $50 licence during May, we will give $50 to charity.

So if you've been thinking about buying a licence in the next little while, May is the time to do it! If you really ought to have a licence, but you can't stand the idea of paying money to something whose name ends in "Inc."; or if you really should have purchased a licence before, but you just haven't got around to it, do it in May! If you're a Hot Potatoes user but you haven't yet tried Quandary, give it a try now!

For full details of the charities we're supporting, and weekly reports on how much we've received and contributed, check out the Web page here:

http://www.halfbakedsoftware.com/charity.php

If you are a member of any other mailing list or newsgroup whose members might be interested in this, please post this message on to them.

All the best,
Martin and Stewart
Half-Baked Software

Just this once

The Charity Month sounds like a very praiseworthy venture.
I am a big fan of Hot Spuds.

I am however uncertain as to who should purchase a licence and for what. I am a licence holder for Quandary which I don't use very much. I use Hot Potatoes quite a lot but haven't purchased a licence.

Perhaps Marttin could outline what the regulations are?

Hi there,

The rules for Hot Potatoes licences are:

Hot Potatoes is free for use by individuals working for state-funded educational institutions which are non-profit making, on the condition that the material you produce using the program is freely available to anyone via the WWW. However, you need to purchase a licence under any of the following conditions:

* You are working for a company or corporation, or an educational institution which is not state-funded.
* You are in business for yourself.
* You charge money for access to the material you make with Hot Potatoes.
* You do not make the material freely available through the WWW.

http://www.halfbakedsoftware.com/hot_pot_licence.php

If you buy a licence, you get a registration key for the Masher program as well; there's no other way to get a Masher key.

Quandary, in contrast, is straightforward shareware (everyone pays).

I know the HotPot licensing terms are a little hard to understand, but our concern has always been to support HotPot development through sales to those who can afford it (corporations, private schools, publishers, Web design companies etc.) while making it free to those who have less money to spend, and who are prepared to share their materials with the community.

We get regular emails from folks in the US military who are convinced that they work for a state-funded educational institution, but so far we've held out against their assaults.

Cheers,
Martin

Thanks Martin
As someone who publishes resources which are freely available on the www the I guess I don't need a licence .

But what does the Masher do??????

Details of your offer appeared in today's Education on the Internet (49,580 subscribers).

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/internet118.htm

Hi there,

Many thanks indeed for the extra publicity. We're hoping we can raise a significant amount for charity, and this will help a lot.

The Masher program enables you to build complete units of HotPot exercises (and other Web pages), all with a consistent appearance, linked together with navigation buttons, and including an index. It's intended for people who create large Websites consisting of many units of material. The v6 Masher can also handle Quandary mazes, and when TexToys 3 comes out next month, it will also integrate with the Masher, so it will be possible to build complete units of material including static Web pages, HotPot exercises, Quandary mazes and TexToys exercises automatically using the Masher. The Masher is included with HotPot 6, and without registration it will build units of up to three pages/exercises. To build more, you need a key, which you can get with a HotPot licence.

Cheers,
Martin