Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!killer!ames!amdahl!rtech!brent From: brent@rtech.UUCP (Brent Williams) Newsgroups: comp.sources.d Subject: Re: SEA files against pkarc author Message-ID: <2150@rtech.UUCP> Date: 8 Jun 88 18:41:02 GMT References: <5763@megaron.arizona.edu> Organization: Relational Technology Inc. Alameda, CA 94501 Lines: 49 From article <5763@megaron.arizona.edu>, by gudeman@arizona.edu (David Gudeman): > In article <733@hadron.UUCP> klr@hadron.UUCP (Kurt L. Reisler) writes: >> >> Seems that the author of the MS-DOS version of ARC, and >> President of SEA has filed a "look & feel" law suit against the >> author of pkarc. I wonder what impact this will have on the >> Unix versions that are floating around, all of which are derived >> from the source code for ARC, which was released by SEA. > > Are you sure about this? I would hate to see SEA accused of something > so slimey and repugnant if it weren't true. I hesitate to believe > that SEA would stoop to such an appallingly foul level as to sue > someone for putting out a superior product to compete with them. Did > they expect their archiving format to become a defacto standard that > only they could supply the program for? Surely they know that if they > won such a suit, users would simply desert the arc format for a freer > one. So as well as being loathsome and unethical, the lawsuit would > be stupid. > > Surely SEA is aware that there isn't anything original about arc. > It's a simple little program that would make a fairly easy project in > a software tools class. Let us hope that this is all simply a > misunderstanding, that in fact SEA is busily engaged in improving > their product rather than taking the destructive approach of causing > trouble for their competition. It was actually a copyright infringement on the source code, quite a different matter from look and feel of screens. Besides, if you've used arc, you're quite aware that there's no look and feel. Not one single pull-down menu or icon anywhere! :-) Personally, I don't blame SEA -- they put a fair amount of work into their code, they had the right idea at the right time, they released the source with all kinds of warnings about derivative works, etc. Then somebody comes along with a work that has some reasonable chance of being derivative (i.e., reads and writes .arc files compatibly) and makes tons of money off it. Wouldn't you be a little fried? I'd only be worried about a Unix port of ARC if I were selling it and making tons of dough. Also, even if the program does something incredibly pedestrian, the source code is still copyrightable. -- -brent williams Relational Technology, Inc. 1080 Marina Village Parkway {amdahl,sun,mtxinu,cpsc6a,hoptoad} Alameda, CA 94501 !rtech!brent (415)-769-1400