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From: webber@brandx.rutgers.edu (Webber)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.groups
Subject: Re: Making binary groups obsolete (was Re:Are binary groups necessary?)
Message-ID: <334@brandx.rutgers.edu>
Date: Fri, 21-Aug-87 06:45:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: brandx.334
Posted: Fri Aug 21 06:45:04 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 22-Aug-87 19:27:38 EDT
References: <266@brandx.rutgers.edu> <8225@utzoo.UUCP> <272@brandx.rutgers.edu> <66@splut.UUCP>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 48
Summary: a few new points raised and lowered
Xref: mnetor news.admin:876 news.groups:1384

In article <66@splut.UUCP>, jay@splut.UUCP (Jay Maynard) writes:
> ....
> By 'gotten from a source', I think he means 'picked up from somewhere
> besides the net', not 'gotten in source form'. Most programs (at least in
> the PC world, anyway) are distributed ONLY in binary form; the author
> doesn't release source.

Assume X gives a source with a copyright notice in it to Y.  Y
compiles it and gives it to Z.  Z now has a copy of an executable and
sure enough there is no copyright notice in the executable, so when
it is posted to the net, who will ever know?  The notion of someone
other that the author or an authorized agent of some posting a copy of
binary (or a source) to the net just sounds like an invitation for trouble.

> ...
> You're showing an astounding bias: that all programmers want to work in C to
> the exclusion of all other languages. Assuming, for the moment that
> programmers will want to release source for free (I'll shoot that one down
> in a moment), you still have to contend with different library functions,
> different word sizes, different word orderings, different file system
> semantics, different peripheral environments... between computers. Even
> among computers running the same processor and OS.

It is alot easier to contend with these problems given a source than
given a binary.

> Your other assumption is also invalid. Why should a programmer, writing a
> shareware package and hoping to make some money off of it, release his
> source code for free? ...

Let me ask you a different question.  How many sites on Usenet do you
think would be comforable with the idea of providing free
advertisement and distribution of someone else's software when they
found out that that other person was ``hoping to make some money off it''?
[note: this is an entirely different question than how many people are
sufficiently annoyed by such usage of the net to ensure that their
cites don't pass on such software.]

> Software ain't free anymore. ...
> This isn't limited to Apples, or IBMs, or STs, or whatever computer you
> choose to name... it's a feature of software itself.

NO.  This MAY be a feature of some current programmers, it has NOTHING
to do with the nature of software.  Just a few months ago I gave away
a piece of software that had only one condition on it (if you change
it, you should remove my name from it).

-------- BOB (webber@aramis.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!webber)