Question: Browser help topics updates business idea

Three things - one being an possible business opportunity (albeit a small one) for Maplesoft ... ps. sorry for the lengthy talk

updates - Under the Table of Contents in the help Browser I can go to System -> Information -> Updates and find the What's New updates in all versions up to and including the one you're using.  Then at the bottom there are links to further explicit updates to which there are no links in the searchable browser (at least that I could find and I bet you won't be able to either) not that it matters but why aren't all of the update topics under a browser folder in the T.O.C. ?

If I find a corrupted help file.  Do I fix it and resave it to the maple.hdb ?  How do I know what aliases were used for that topic, and is the topic the same as the listed name? 

On that subject I had the unfortunate problem where I had accidentally saved a test folder to the maple.hdb which I had unchecked the readonly properties.  The problem was that the TopicName I gave it was different than name I gave it in the folder listing and so I could not use Remove Topic from the help database menu.  I used word to open the maple.hdb file and found my folder name with a topic that I gave it as 34 and successfully removed it that way.  However, it was probably easier, as I found out later by experiment that I could have used INTERFACE_HELP(delete) to just remove the folder itself with all of it's contents and I didn't need to know the topic name. 

Now for the business, haha.  Okay, suppose you have a number of clients using your old software all the time, how do you get them to change and buy your new software?  Well, I thought, now this of course treads a fine line on backporting which probably isn't goint to happen ... so this is what I mean.  Maplesoft provides a help file database update for older software that includes commands from the newer versions (We could always go online and check it out but it would only be for interest sakes) so we(Maplesoft) need the users of older software to become aware all the time of the newer commands, and what better way to inform them than to stick updates in their help file that they have access to all the time.  Perhaps when they go to check out a command it brings them to a new command or shows them that the one they are using is deprecated, ... but ... they think "Ah shoot!  I can't use it because I have the older software." and the more this happens might incline them or persuade them, so to speak, to edge them to get the new software.  Of course you can't sell them on commands they barely use but the updates in their help file might have them check it out more often than not. 

That's it in a nutshell, maybe it's a good argument for partial backporting at least it was worth a pitch from me.  However if there is anyone to shoot the backporting idea down, it would be easy to say " the clientelle of older software is small and negligable " or " wasting resources on older software "  things like that I normally hear.  And of course the idea is to throw every single resource into your new software but sometimes I could also argue that using a negligable amount of resources to do things like backporting, your gains could be tantamount (a lot of exageration there) but stepping aside a minute imagine buying software you knew was going to be supported for 2 years or even 3 years instead of 1.  Wouldn't that make at least the smallest amount of sense?

For Maple though, I think a lot of their revenue comes from universities, students, and some from industry.  Who are usually buying the most up-to-date software anyways.  Let's analyze for a second, take a first year student who buys Maple, they will most likely have it for the 4 years in University, they may or may not upgrade because of economic circumstances but maybe they bought in 2nd year?  Most likely they'll use it for 3?  but maybe the sweet spot for students is 2years?  In which case a 2 year support will be ideal for them anyway.  ... just a thought

Then lets look at the big picture, the software industry is cut-throat.  Lagging behind just a little bit could cost the company.

Instead of all that we, ourselves, could even create an application that updates our old software with the new helpfiles.  We could do it manually, but automatically is so much more interesting (push enter and our files are updated ... cool! )

Back to my questions.  Why aren't all the update topics in the browser?  Anyone is welcome to comment, again sorry for the length (next time less talk more maple)