From: utzoo!decvax!decwrl!sun!megatest!fortune!hpda!hplabs!sri-unix!rconn@brl.arpa Newsgroups: net.micro.cpm Title: Re: ZCPR2 and the PD Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.1352 Posted: Tue May 10 20:50:54 1983 Received: Fri May 13 23:50:07 1983 From: Rick Conn First of all, I believe that you have a right to your opinions as I have a right to mine. I'm not trying to change your opinion (well, maybe I am), and I am writing this simply to express my feelings on the subject. I don't classify what Workman is doing as piracy. Piracy implies that legal harm is being done, such as stealing from someone. Stealing copies of CP/M is piracy since harm is being done to DR (in the form of a loss of income that would be there if the pro- duct was sold instead). Selling PD software isn't causing any harm that I can see. I don't feel a loss of money because Work- man is selling ZCPR2. This does NOT mean, however, that I approve of selling PD software. I don't feel that it is morally right to take advan- tage of the generosity of others in this manner. In the case of ZCPR2, Workman asked me for permission and offered a percentage. I granted the permission (rationale: to provide a source for those who were not successful or did not desire to tap into the PD) but declined the percentage (rationale: maintaining my phi- losophy of giving it away in the first place). I don't believe that Workman asked the other PD authors for permission (I know he didn't for my old HELP system), and I believe this is morally wrong, but I also believe he has the right to do this by the sim- ple fact that it IS in the public domain. As for advertising on this net, I agree completely that this is wrong. I don't believe, tho, that what Jerry did was advertising (unless Jerry is getting a percentage of the sales, which I don't think he is). If Workman came on and sent a message saying "I'm selling so-and-so for $$$", then THAT would be advertising. As- suming that Workman did not ask Jerry to make the announcement and that Jerry was passing it on only for information purposes, then Jerry used the net to pass on information of interest to others, which is a big part of what the net is for. My saying that Rolm's Ada Language System is to be validated by the end of May or that the 68010 is on the market for $20 and here's what it does is passing information, which is fine, and I don't call this advertising since advertising has, as I feel, an implication of profit to the person who passes the information in this case. Note that, by the dictionary, simply making a public notice is advertising, so if advertising is to be banned from the ARPA Net, we may as well shut down the electronic mailing lists now. Rick