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From: chuq@sun.uucp (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: net.sources.mac and shareware (apology and question)
Message-ID: <3017@sun.uucp>
Date: Thu, 21-Nov-85 12:04:34 EST
Article-I.D.: sun.3017
Posted: Thu Nov 21 12:04:34 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 23-Nov-85 06:16:16 EST
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Organization: Sun Micro -- NFS Consulting Group
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> Here is a great case in point: Jeff Shulman at topaz posts three messages
> of Diatom in net.sources.mac. To quote, "I wrote it to learn how to make
> the Mac do all the wonderful things it does". What he posted was a binary,
> a doc file, and a configuration file. Great. He learned how to do lots of
> wonderful things, and I have a program binary that prints pretty pictures.
> If I had a source, I could learn how to print pretty picutres myself, but
> he didn't post the source, so I can't. He gains, but nobody else can share
> in it without decompiling his program. I don't see how this helps out the
> new user. Or even the not so new user...

One thing I didn't make clear, and I apologize to Jeff for that, was that Jeff
didn't write diatom, but was making something off the Delphi system available.
Personally, I think the work he is doing with net.*.mac is wonderful. 

Unfortunately, it just complicates the problem. Since we DO get stuff off of
Compuserve and off of Delphi, we don't always have access to the source. In
the case of a number of things (like uw, for example), the binary is useful
enough to warrant posting without source. In other cases (and I count Diatom
among them) there just doesn't seem to be a practical use. If I had the source,
I could use it as a learning tool, but what else is Diatom good for, and how
useful is it without source?

So the question is: Do we want the binaries anyway, if we can't get the
source, or can we come up with a reasonable standard of when something
ought to be posted and when it shouldn't? If nothing else, I'd like to find
a way to prevent people like Jeff from getting flamed by people like me
every time they post something from off then net that we don't like. If we
can give them an idea of what we don't want, maybe we can cut some of the
volume in net.sources.mac without loss of the useful stuff.
-- 
:From catacombs of Castle Tarot:        Chuq Von Rospach 
sun!chuq@decwrl.DEC.COM                 {hplabs,ihnp4,nsc,pyramid}!sun!chuq

Let us now take the sacre oath. As of now, he is no longer an elephant!