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From: reid@glacier.ARPA (Brian Reid)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: philosophical question about mod.recipes and its kind
Message-ID: <3273@glacier.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 17-Jan-86 00:35:59 EST
Article-I.D.: glacier.3273
Posted: Fri Jan 17 00:35:59 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 18-Jan-86 07:01:00 EST
Organization: Stanford University, Computer Systems Lab
Lines: 58


Many of you may have noticed the new mod.recipes newsgroup, which I set up
in November 1985 for the creation of a "USENET cookbook" consisting of
recipes contributed by people all around the net. It got off to a rocky
start because of distribution difficulties and "features" of the news
software, but I think that the mechanism is now under control. About 40
recipes have gone out; new recipes go out at the rate of 4 per week, and
there is some simple software distributed with them (which I wrote) that
allows a fairly primitive cookbook to be assembled; its pages look very much
like man pages from the Unix Programmer's Manual.

Naturally the wide distribution of mod.recipes gives the entire set of
recipes and the software to anyone and everyone who wants it. I wouldn't
have it any other way. Long live Radio Free Usenet.

I've been having a series of conversations with a person at a company near
here. He is some kind of official in some Unix User's organization. I've
never been to any of those meetings, and I don't really understand the
difference (if there is a difference) between Usenix and /usr/group and
anything else. 

Anyhow, this gentleman has taken the full collection of recipes and the
software, modified the format somewhat, removed the word USENET from it
(changing the title from "USENET Cookbook" to "Unix Cook's Manual") and is
planning on selling it to raise money for that user's organization, which I
assume is a nonprofit group.

I am at the same time thrilled by this and very dismayed by it, and I'd like
to ask this collection of USENET lovers whether or not there is supposed to
be any kind of "netiquette" for situations like this. On the one hand the
very definition of "free and public" is that everybody who wants it can have
it to do whatever he wants with it; on the other hand, removing the name
"USENET" from it, and commercializing it (even to benefit a nonprofit
organization) flies against the two reasons why I worked so hard to set it
up in the first place, namely that I love USENET and I love free public
non-commercial things. 

As nearly as I can tell from the mail I've exchanged with him, he's a
perfectly reasonable, perfectly fine fellow. He isn't trying to make a buck
for himself; he's trying to raise money for the user's organization. Neither
he nor I have any prior experience at the etiquette issues here; my guess is
that he will be very surprised to hear that I am at all unhappy with what he
is doing, even as I was very surprised to hear that he was taking it so far
out of USENET that people might not even know where it had come from,
mailing their contributions to him instead of posting them. Quoting:

    "At XXXXX I showed my current Unix Cook's Manual to a bunch
    of people, all of whom were excited.  Many will contribute
    (of course I'll forward to you when they do) and if
    contributions are half as interesting as yours the book
    will be great.  XXXXX people also seemed willing to foot
    the bill to get the 1st edition published for sale at YYYYY."

How should I react? How should the net react? Is this an issue or a
non-issue? If it is a non-issue why am I so dismayed by it?
-- 
	Brian Reid	decwrl!glacier!reid
	Stanford	reid@SU-Glacier.ARPA