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From: rusbara2@sage.cc.purdue.edu (Bob Rusbasan)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: Elvis
Message-ID: <5040@sage.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 10 Nov 90 06:24:15 GMT
References: <29500@boulder.Colorado.EDU> <3763@vela.acs.oakland.edu>
Reply-To: rusbara2@sage.cc.purdue.edu (Bob Rusbasan)
Organization: Purdue University
Lines: 44

In article <3763@vela.acs.oakland.edu> w8sdz@vela.acs.oakland.edu (Keith Petersen) writes:
[someone's question and remarks on Elvis's lack of docs deleted]

>This is exactly why you won't see this version of Elvis archived at
>SIMTEL20.  We do not accept programs which have no documentation and
>information on who the author is so we can contact the author in case
>of problems or questions.

Elvis (in source form) was recently posted to alt.sources by the author.
There was quite a lot of discussion in alt.sources and alt.sources.d
after that, bug reports, etc., and a bug fix for the MS-DOS version 
was put out (for one thing, renaming a file left lost clusters).

There WERE docs with this version.

>Many programs being distributed without documentation turn out to be
>copyrighted and/or not freely distributable.  Check the COM and EXE
>files with a binary dump or editor program.  90% of the files I've
>seen on BBSs which have no documentation are pirated or of suspicious
>origin (read that as possible trojans).

This is not the case with Elvis.  I compiled it myself when it was
released to alt.sources (it might have been comp.sources, but I'm
99% sure it was alt).  Also, gnu has taken it in from what I can
tell.  Bill mentioned that the source was available; I believe you
can get it from most/all of the gnu sites and from any alt.sources
archive site, and the docs should be there too.

Sorry to viciously flame away at you like this ;-), but I just though
I'd help to clear up a few things since your comments seemed to be
directed specifically at Elvis.  They of course are true in general,
and, for that matter, for all we know this particular compilation
of Elvis is just chock full of viruses, Trojan horses, and every other
terrible thing you could imagine -- but that's the same with any 
program posted here, and Bill tests them as well as he can I'm sure
so it's as safe as you can hope to get when using freely distributed
software.  Even commercial software gets hit now and then, so if you
use ANY software you aren't completely safe (unless you write it all
yourself).

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| Bob Rusbasan          |  This space unintentionally left blank.    |
| bob@en.ecn.purdue.edu |                                            |
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