Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!rebel!george From: george@rebel.UUCP (George M. Sipe) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: SIMTEL20 to ban ARC files Message-ID: <46165@rebel.UUCP> Date: 16 Sep 88 20:32:05 GMT References: <12594@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> <8476@smoke.ARPA> Reply-To: george@rebel.UUCP (George M. Sipe) Organization: Tolerant Systems, Atlanta GA Lines: 48 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? To say "well, if you go back to an >earlier version it's public domain" indicates to me that if we did that >we would never see any growth in the PUBLIC DOMAIN version because >anything with more features would be (and is) copyrighted. > >We should not place ourselves in a position where a copyright holder has >control over the future growth of *any* standard. That's the mistake we >made when we all chose to use ARC. >-- >Keith Petersen >Arpa: W8SDZ@SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL >Uucp: {att,decwrl,harvard,lll-crg,ucbvax,uw-beaver}!simtel20.army.mil!w8sdz >GEnie: W8SDZ I believe I understand the point Keith is trying to make (in this and a number of other postings). But, consider this: 1. Katz et. al. come out with a new (non-infringing) archive utility with speed and features roughly comparable to zoo 1.71 (public domain). 2. After some time, it is reasonably debugged. 3. Someone (maybe me :-) takes it, makes it faster and adds many very useful features so that everyone will want to use it (like zoo 2.0 maybe). BUT, I copyright it with whatever unreasonable terms I can think up. Of course, everyone would be free to use the previous PD version if they were willing to give up my improvements. They could even reimplement the new features in the PD version and keep it PD if they wanted to. What's the difference between this and using the PD zoo as a base to build upon? Just (1) the PD zoo is here today and debugged, (2) the PD zoo has many useful support utilities (of varying PD/copyright status), (3) the PD zoo has been proven across a number of diverse systems and has a current "following". Consider supporting zoo, or at least PD zoo. If anyone knows Katz, ask him to use PD zoo as his starting point. At least ask him to use its file format. The file format is PD as is the term "zoo". Let's not get another format just to be different when it is not necessary. -- George M. Sipe, Phone: (404) 662-1533 Tolerant Systems, 6961 Peachtree Industrial, Norcross, GA 30071 UUCP: ...!{decvax,hplabs,linus,rutgers,seismo}!gatech!rebel!george