Xref: utzoo comp.sys.ibm.pc:18751 comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d:930
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!cornell!batcomputer!sun.soe!dave
From: dave@sun.soe (Dave Goldblatt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: System Enhancement Associates, etc.
Message-ID: <1323@sun.soe>
Date: 5 Sep 88 19:56:03 GMT
References: <175@cix.UUCP>
Organization: Clarkson University, Potsdam, NY
Lines: 60

From article <175@cix.UUCP>, by fthorn@cix.UUCP (Frank Thornley):
> Thom Henderson is one of the pioneers of FIDONET, and among other
> products SEA are responsible for the SEADOG mailer program which is a
> stand-alone electronic mail program for the IBM-PC. Thom is also
> responsible for editing FIDONEWS which is the weekly newsletter
> distributed around FIDONET - it runs to something like 100K/week last
> time I looked. They have also written a proprietry file-transfer
> protocol which is used in several PC comms packages, and bulletin
> board systems - SEALINK.
> 
> Frank Thornley - CIX - a new era in communic%%#$^**^

To correct a few misconceptions (without trying to take anything away
from Thom Henderson's software development):

System Enhancement Associates (SEA) did in fact develop the ARC program.
This refers to the MS-DOS program of that name.  The compaction routines
in ARC were NOT (all) written by Thom Henderson or anyone else at SEA;
if you look in the source, you will see he does indeed credit the original
source -- at least, he used to.  SEAdog is a commercial program he wrote
to act as a front-end for Fido bulletin boards; it handles messages and
files.

Thom no longer actively participates in Fidonet; he withdrew to form his
own network, AlterNet.  Thus Thom no longer edits the Fidonet newsletter.

SEAlink is not "proprietary" in the sense that no one may use it; it
instead has been made available for public use, although I do not think
the protocol was placed in the public domain.  It is similar to WXmodem,
but has a six-block windows as opposed to WXmodem's four.

The use of the .ARC extension dates back (at least) to the days of CP/M.
As such, I fail to see how SEA can attempt to enjoin anyone from using
the extension for their own software.  I am curious if the other "ARC"
utility authors (Vernon Buerg, for example) will be forced from the
scene as well.

Previously I had a lot of respect for Thom Henderson and SEA; they put
out a lot of software to make people's lives easier.  Unfortunately, it
seems they insist on a monopoly.  Sad, but that's the way it looks to
me.

As an aside, Thom wrote a few months ago that he in fact made an 
insignificant amount of money from shareware releases of ARC; rather
almost all of his income was from businesses licensing ARC for their
use.  When Phil Katz tried to enter this market, SEA began their current
legal action.  Reason: SEA supposedly makes into six figures from licensing
of ARC.

-dg-

These opinions are mine exclusively, although they may respresent the
feelings of a LOT of Sysops and computer users.  Feel free to contact
me at the electronic addresses below if you have comments.

-- 

Internet: dave@sun.soe.clarkson.edu    or:   dave@clutx.clarkson.edu
BITNET:   dave@CLUTX.Bitnet            uucp: {rpics, gould}!clutx!dave
Matrix:   Dave Goldblatt @ 1:260/360   ICBM: Why do you want to know? :-)