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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!vortex!lauren
From: lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: sources
Message-ID: <112@vortex.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 21-Aug-83 19:19:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: vortex.112
Posted: Sun Aug 21 19:19:44 1983
Date-Received: Mon, 22-Aug-83 04:24:09 EDT
Organization: Vortex Technology, Los Angeles
Lines: 55

It's people running around yelling "up with piracy" that result
in the failure of many small software companies who are attempting
to survive and put out good products.

There are many damn good reasons for protecting sources (and for hanging
pirates up by their balls or some other handy appendages).

Here are a couple of them (reasons, not appendages):

1) If sources are freely available, and you are distributing your
   software cheaply or for free, there's nothing stopping other
   people from coming along, taking your code, incorporating it into
   THEIR software (or even just changing the name) and then making a fortune
   selling it expensively.  This tends to hurt everyone -- both the people
   who wrote the software and who wanted it to be available cheaply, and the
   people BUYING the software who end up paying much more than they
   need to for the code.  This can even happen when sources are not
   available, but sources make such situations much more likely.
   There have been many situations like this.  

   In cases where a small firm is trying to survive by selling software,
   such actions can wipe them out, especially when the "pirates" are a large
   firm that they can't afford to sue.  

2) Quality Control.  Once sources are out, eveybody and his brother
   starts modifying them.  This is fine for some software (and
   sometimes even desirable) but can be a disaster with more complex programs.

   People start getting hold of "corrupt" versions that don't work right
   or "almost" work (since who knows what modifications have been made
   to *that* version by someone somewhere) and the program degenerates
   into uselessness.  I've been watching this slowly happen to my original
   UMODEM program.  Lots of people have added all sorts of features that
   I mostly consider useless but that they thought would be really nifty
   for themselves.  My nice little program has more than doubled in size
   (or maybe tripled by now) thanks to such changes.  People contact me
   occasionally with a question about UMODEM (after all, my name is still
   at the top of the history list) and it's really hard for me to help
   them, since so many bizarre changes have been made to that code by
   so many people.  UMODEM, by the way, is the LAST program I've put
   into the public domain or for which I have generally released sources.

Unless you just don't care about what happens to your software (or you want
to encourage modification by the world) then there is little choice
except to protect sources in most cases.  I used to feel more liberal
about releasing sources for my software, but I learn by experience.

--Lauren--

P.S.  One exception to the above is when the company releasing the software
      has a nice large legal staff and is in a position to instantly
      sue violators.  Western Electric, for example, would fall into 
      this catagory!

--LW--