Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!iuvax!bsu-cs!dhesi From: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: SIMTEL20 to ban ARC files Message-ID: <3944@bsu-cs.UUCP> Date: 14 Sep 88 13:51:19 GMT References: <12594@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> <8476@smoke.ARPA> Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana Lines: 30 In article <8476@smoke.ARPA> w8sdz@brl.arpa (Keith B. Petersen (WSMR|towson) ) writes: >How can we reason that we should use ZOO as the new standard when the >latest is *not* public domain? Keith, zoo the archiver itself may not be, but the archive format is. Let's assume the new public domain standard that you mentioned has come into being. Both the format and the source code are in the public domain. Now suppose somebody takes the source code, adds great speed and some new features that a lot of people want, and distributes the result as a copyrighted program *without source*, just for MS-DOS. Suppose this new program creates archives that can still be extracted by previous programs, so MS-DOS users don't feel bad about using it, and it becomes a de facto standard--but it uses an undocumented extended archive format. You've lost control. Any other extensions you now make to the public domain format will likely be incompatible with the extensions already made in the format used by this new binary-only program. By the way, nobody is actually forbidden from distributing zoo 2.x, though a lot of articles make it sound that way. All that they have to do is EITHER conform to some very reasonable requirements, OR contribute 10% of the gross to a non-profit organization of my choice, OR contact me to negotiate an exception. If somebody is unwilling to do even one of these three, how much trouble do you expect me to go to on his behalf? -- Rahul Dhesi UUCP: !{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!dhesi