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From: grr@unirot.UUCP (George Robbins)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: philosophical question about mod.recipes and its kind
Message-ID: <280@unirot.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 18-Jan-86 04:54:46 EST
Article-I.D.: unirot.280
Posted: Sat Jan 18 04:54:46 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 19-Jan-86 05:38:50 EST
References: <3273@glacier.ARPA>
Reply-To: grr@unirot.UUCP (George Robbins)
Organization: The Soup Kitchen, Piscataway NJ
Lines: 48

In article <3273@glacier.ARPA> reid@glacier.ARPA (Brian Reid) writes:
>
>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.
>
>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

I would tell him he's being an rot1(bttipmf).  There is no excuse for not giving
full credit to the sources of the material, and it is at best in poor taste to
take other persons work and repackage it with minimal editing, for monetary
gain.

I know there are people who repackage public domain software, but most of them
put some effort into cleaning things up and makeing the software available to
a spectrum of users which was part of the reason the stuff was entered into the
public domain in the first place.

If you cannot persuade him to title the booklet and give apprpriate credit, in
a fashion that you feel is in tune with intersts of the people who submitted
the material to the newsgroup, you should try to discuss it with the this users
groups other officers, since it puts the whole group in a tawdry light.

In the longer run, since it is a moderated group, you should have your software
insert a ugly little legal notice saying that the material cannot be copied
for commercial purposes, nor have the origen information removed.  This is of
course legally vacuous, but it would at least tell clever people that they are
being bad guys...

I guess posting a policy statement monthly would probably be adequate and less
offensive than appending a notice to every submission.

-- 
George Robbins			uucp:	...!ihnp4!tapa!grr
P.O. Box 177				...!caip!unirot!grr
Lincoln U, PA  19352	[Any ideas herein are not responsible for themselves!]