Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!oddjob!uwvax!dogie!uwmcsd1!bbn!mit-eddie!killer!pollux!ti-csl!home!khill
From: khill@home.csc.ti.com (Ken Hill - Patents)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: PLANETS.COM
Message-ID: <42863@ti-csl.CSNET>
Date: 22 Feb 88 17:47:31 GMT
References: <4435@watdcsu.waterloo.edu>
Sender: news@ti-csl.CSNET
Reply-To: khill@home.UUCP (Ken Hill - Patents)
Distribution: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Organization: TI Computer Science Center, Dallas
Lines: 27
Summary: Pirated? - not necessarily

In article <4435@watdcsu.waterloo.edu> tknight@watdcsu.waterloo.edu (T.Knight - Computing Services) writes:
.
.   A few days ago someone was asking for source to PLANETS.COM that was
.posted recently. I just ran PLANETS through CHK4BOMB and found a
."Copyright 1985 Borland Inc." message in it. When you invoke PLANETS
.it displays the message "PLANETS V3.0 is a Public Domain Program". Looks
.like someone's doing a little piracy.
.          Anyway its definitely pirated software that's been altered
.so use at your own risk, both physical and moral !!.

See if this string was at the beginning of the program.  I just looked
through some old utilitys I wrote using Turbo Pascal 2.0, and they all
had a COPYRIGHT 1984 BORLAND INC string right near the beginning of
the .com file.  I assume that Borland, and probably other compiler
companies, put some sort of notice in to protect their run-time
libraries.  And Borland licenses you to distribute compiled code you
have written which includes their run-time libraries.

I have seen a lot of Borland material, and a planet position
calculating program doesn't seem to fit with what I have seen.  I am
not guaranteeing that PLANETS.COM is not pirated, I haven't yet looked
at it, but the notice you saw doesn't necessarily mean it is pirated. 

There are no typos.  If you think you saw one, see an opthamolo... optaha...
ophthamal... eye doctor.
Ken Hill
{convex!smu, texsun,im4u,seismo!ut-sally!im4u}!ti-csl!khill