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From: elg@killer.UUCP (Eric Green)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: PD Boot Disks
Message-ID: <917@killer.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 21-May-87 00:44:28 EDT
Article-I.D.: killer.917
Posted: Thu May 21 00:44:28 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 24-May-87 03:42:32 EDT
References: <1541@cadovax.UUCP>
Organization: The Unix(tm) Connection, Dallas, Texas
Lines: 49

in article <1541@cadovax.UUCP>, keithd@cadovax.UUCP (Keith Doyle) says:
> 
> In article <1868@cbmvax.cbmvax.cbm.UUCP> carolyn@cbmvax.UUCP (Carolyn Scheppner CATS) writes:
>>   I'd like to clarify a legal issue here.  Files from the WorkBench disk
>>may not be distributed on shareware or freeware or in any publicly
>>redistributable manner.  The contents of the Workbench disk is copyrighted.
> 
>>   Publicly redistributable software can be distributed with an installation
>>script designed to strip a user's copy of Workbench and install itself
>>onto that copy of Workbench.

Hi ho, Hi ho, brain-damaged lawyers galore,
feed us cash, and we'll feed you bills
and from our mouths will pour spouts of swill!

(such as the above quotes from Carolyn, which are obviously depraved rantings
of brain-dead lawyers... after all, everybody knows that you need an Amiga to
run Workbench, and everybody knows that each Amiga already COMES with
Workbench....)

By the way, I'm not sure as to the legality of one legal owner of a piece of
software giving a copy of his software to another legal owner of that piece of
software. For example, I am a legal owner of SuperForth-64, and one of my
disks was bad upon recieving it. I re-copied that disk from another friend
with SuperForth-64, instead of waiting for a month while Parsec Research
shipped me new disks.  Gosh golly, that makes me one of them "software
pirates", huh, according to Commodore's lawyers! So what's the difference
between Fred Fish giving me, a legal owner of Workbench, a copy of Workbench
on a public domain disk, and me copying that SuperForth disk? *WITH
PERMISSION OF PARSEC RESEARCH*, by the way -- I called them when I found the
bad disk, and mentioned that my friend had it.

So what's the big deal?

As a software author myself, and copyright holder on a couple of
semi-commercial programs, I am quite aware of problems of piracy etc. However,
I fail to see any problem here, since the only company making the Amiga is
Commodore, and thus the Workbench wouldn't do anybody else any good. Oops, I
forget. It WOULD be useful for programmers to be able to put the Workbench on
their disks.... oh dear, it's useful, how much can we rip.... err.... charge
them for it? (snicker snicker). And it's useful for PROGRAMMERS! Hey, we
shouldn't subsidize those nasty critters by letting them put Workbench on PD
disks for FREE, who knows, maybe they'd even start writing PROGRAMS, ooh ick,
what a disaster!
--
Eric Green   elg%usl.CSNET     CS student, University of SW Louisiana
{cbosgd,ihnp4}!killer!elg      Apprentice Haquer, Bayou Telecommunications
Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191      BBS phone #: 318-984-3854  300/1200 baud
Lafayette, LA 70509            I disclaim my existence, and yours, too.