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They often have no way to do so. Your CTO, who signed the deal, will get emailed some support information. They'll promptly archive or delete the email.

Worse still is putting your manuals behind a login. I know some companies believe they're valuable secrets for some reason, but most of your customers will simply never be able to log in to get them.

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There are many industries where the workflow espoused in the manual IS the secret sauce, and, once replicated, can be replaced by a much cheaper product.

In these cases, you will never recoup your NRE.

Except, it's easy for competitors to get a copy if they care to. They can ask around for a copy, or just buy your product and get a login.

Oracle has sued competitors for handing out copies of the manual, suggesting requiring a login isn't much of a barrier: https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2013/06/18/oracle-w...

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