About The Fred Fish Collection CD ROM Project
   ==============================================

Fred Fish's collection of public domain and Shareware
represents the definitive source of such software for the
Amiga community. About a year and a half ago I first
contacted Fred regarding the possibility of putting his
collection on a CD ROM disc. At the time, however, there
seemed there was no likely possibility of connecting CD  ROM
drives to the Amiga, at least not on a scale that would
generate enough sales to pay back the cost of such a project.
Early in 1990 we contacted Commodore regarding the status of
CD ROM for the Amiga and was briefed on the "Baby" (now CDTV)
project. HyperMedia Concepts was formed and work began in
earnest on The Fred Fish Collection CD ROM. The Fred Fish
Collection on CD ROM began shipping in January of 1991. This
disc contained the Fred Fish collection in both the AmigaDOS
foramt and in a compressed format suitable for BBS use. With
the release 1.3 of disc the Fred Fish collection had grown to
big for both copies of the collection to fit on a single
disc. The Fred Fish Collection Online disc was created to
address the needs of those owners that wished to use the CD
ROM online on a BBS system.

When we began the project two years ago three very specific
guidelines where established for the  project:

1) The disc must be true to the original source.  The CD ROM
is intended to be a distribution media for the Fred Fish
collection in its ORIGINAL form.  This disc is intended to be
a LIBRARY from which the component programs can be copied for
use.  The LHARCed files where created from the original source
disks purchased from Fred Fish.  The 'by program' organization
contains the contents of the latest of the individual programs
sa they appeared on the Fred Fish disks.

2) The CD ROM had to be priced in such a way as not to take
advantage of the work of others.  Most of the material on the
disc is the result of the hard work of a group of dedicated
developers that are receiving minimal compensation for their
work.  It was our intent to price the disc in such a way as to
recover the costs of production, maintenance, and
distribution of the CD ROM.  The target price we believed
should not exceed that of most game programs.  We felt it
would be ethically incorrect for us to profit from the work
of others.  The price also had to conform to the distribution
conditions stated in documentation of many of the programs on
the disc; stating that only a minimal production,
distribution and copying fee should be charged for disks
(discs) containing the individual programs.  The current
pricing of the disc represents a cost of 14 cents per Fred
Fish disk (or 20 cents per megabyte of data) to the end user.
We feel this complies with the intent of the distribution
guidelines for the programs on the disc.

3) The disc must be virus free.  Production of the disc was
done on two dedicate Amigas with Workbench installed from
factory sealed original disks.  The data was loaded directly
from write protected Fred Fish disks obtained directly from
Fred.  No other disks where allowed near the production
stations.  The production process was monitored through out
using various virus detection utilities.  We feel that the
disk is as clean as it can possibly be.  It was our intent to
produce a disc that could be used as a virus free source for
the production of Fred Fish disks by user groups and others.