Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!mit-eddie!media-lab!lacsap
From: lacsap@plethora.media.mit.edu (Pascal Chesnais)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: SLIP from next.com
Message-ID: <5255@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU>
Date: 17 Feb 91 16:25:04 GMT
Sender: news@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU
Lines: 41

In article Re: SLIP from next.com
 cbenda@unccvax.uncc.edu (carl m benda)
of : University of NC at Charlotte writes:

I.E. you don't announce
to the world that you are leaving your newspaper on the subway for someone
else to use when you get off at your stop, nevertheless, the newspaper IS
available to the public...  If I were looking for good quality public domain
NeXT machine source code, blah_blah_.next.com is probably the first place I
would try.  IF I'm wrong, let me know, but I always thought that if its
"getable" its public.

/Carl
No flamage taken.  Yup I have worked with RMS, and agree with
lots of his views.  However the reality is that we are subject to
laws.

Now for the newspaper anology:  Newspaper deliver threw it on
my front porch.  Anyone can go up and take it away.  Most
people don't.  First it is trespassing, second it is theft
of property, third it is bad neighbor relations.  Now the current
laws seem to favor copyrighted software as PROPERTY.  The
machine in question was not a community delivery stand, it was
not even next.com (NeXT's moat between them and the world),
but it was an internal distribution mechanism between next
and their campus consultants (you know the students who really
helpful).

Gettable is *not* public according to recent Morris conviction.
It is noble to say "it is an acceptable practice" but the law
says you are wrong.  My post alluded to security holes,  how
many of you export your filesystems indiscriminantly?  Quite
a few I imagine.  That makes a lot of things "gettable" and some of
it copyrighted material.  Stupid careless people are still protected
by laws (myself included).

This subject is an interesting one, and obviously one that anyone
can flame at length about, but it probably should go off to misc.legal
or comp.legal (if they still exist!).

pasc