Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!rutgers!ucsd!ucsdhub!esosun!seismo!uunet!l5comp!scotty
From: scotty@l5comp.UUCP (Scott Turner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Wake up and smell the coffee
Summary: Who are really the bad guys here folks?
Message-ID: <439@l5comp.UUCP>
Date: 1 Oct 88 11:53:35 GMT
References: <4574232@<KPETERSEN> <16800358@clio> <925@psu-cs.UUCP> <1988Sep13.185106.14193@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu> <506@mks.UUCP>
Reply-To: scotty@l5comp.UUCP (Scott Turner)
Organization: L5 Computing, Edmonds, WA
Lines: 306

[The author kindly asks that if you wish to flame him in public that you
at least read the last few paragraphs of this message before doing so.]

I've read this SEA vs PKWare stuff for what seems like at least a year now
(although it's just been a month or two I guess) and finally I think I'm ready
to make a clear concise summary of this whole mess. (Attached below)

One reason this thing is a mess is that more people haven't read and ANALYZED
what they've read before making leaps of logic (and then making their leaps
public via this forum.)

The other big problem has been one Keith Peterson. He's been dancing around
this thing trying to throw gas on it to keep it going. He's scored a few
good splashes, but he has also needlessly muddied this matter when he missed.
(Can you make mud with gas? I hope so or my metaphor is in trouble. :)

First big leap that people SHOULD have made but didn't about the recent
2nd lawsuit filed by SEA: They spent their $40,000 WELL! They got a damn
good lawyer who advised them well and may yet get one Phil Katz thrown in
jail.

How! Is what more than a few people will be screaming at this point. Keith
and others have so muddied the issue that I'm sure ALOT of people will only
now understand what I'm about to explain.

It doesn't MATTER at this point wether SEA's trademark, copyright, patent or
whatever they want to claim matters. It's a moot point now. Old history.
Yesterday's cat litter.

SEA's lawyer laid a beaut of a TRAP for Phil Katz in that out of court
settlement. And Phil's lawyer let him leap right into the middle of it.
I was truely amazed at the sheer beauty of the strategy that SEA's lawyer
laid out on this one folks.

Phil signed that agreement even though it had two very key problems for him.
First, it clearly states he can't use the term ARC inside his new program
or dox. Second, ANY product he makes can't use the letter grouping ARC
anywhere inside the names of files it creates.

SEA's lawyer then finished the trap by making this deal with Phil to give
him a license to use the ARC file format and to distribute a modified
version of his program until Jan '89. HOWEVER, Phil's lawyer forgot the
fine print. While Phil can distribute said program, I can find no loophole
for said restriction on using the letter grouping ARC in filenames! ie Phil
could still sell a program, but he had to change the file extension he used.

Time to sue yer lawyer Phil if he didn't explain that to you. :)

There is now little doubt that Phil's goose is COOKED over this out of court
settlement he signed. He has CLEARLY violated it's terms and it doesn't
matter one damn bit what the original merits of the case were. He's now in dutch
for not following the out of court settlement he agreed to.

So all of Keith's recent efforts to fan the "SEA can't claim a trademark on
ARC" are for naught, if he's trying to save Phil. Even if SEA's claim to ARC
as a trademark is proven to be false at this point, Phil agreed not to use
it in his out of court settlement.

All I can suggest is that Phil better get a sharper lawyer to defend him on
this contempt filing than he had on the original. This SEA lawyer is SHARP.

Why do I think the lawyer for SEA is so sharp? Look at the dates involved
here folks. Less than two weeks went by between the effective date of the
out of court settlement and the second filing.

My impression is that SEA's lawyer said to SEA: "Well guys, *MAYBE* I can
win this trademark thing if it goes to court, and maybe I can't. The odds
aren't too good. However, if we can get an out of court settlement with
this little idea I've got cooked up in it I can assure you I can nail
him when he violates it." Phil's lawyer didn't spot the trap, Phil fell for
it, and with a cackle SEA's lawyer leapt upon them as soon as he had the
proof he needed in hand. (SEA's lawyer probably bought the first copy of
the PKPAK software :)

The reason I think the above, is that if those little bombs hidden in the
out of court settlement weren't intentional, it would have taken longer than
two weeks for SEA to notice the legal bonanza Phil had given them. They
HAD to be waiting with baited breath for Phil's new program to have acted
as quickly as they did.

Instead of filing "Friend of the Court" documents, those who like Phil better
start baking cakes with files inside 'em. :) Of course the judge MIGHT let
him off with all his money gone rather than taking his liberty, but I just
don't see any way he's going to get out of this one scott free. Especially
with the class of legal talent he's hiring.

Enough on that topic, onward to Keith's next favorite topic, the new program
Phil may be writing from the grey bar motel. (Do they let you have a computer
in federal prison, or just a tennis racket?)

Here again all sounds great on the surface, until we read the fine print. Ya
have to read that fine print folks!

These guys are only going to make the source for the file access toolkit
available in the public domain folks. NOT the programs! No one has promised
to write a program using this library and give it away as yet. And don't
fool yourselves, Phil isn't going to be doing anything of the sort! He already
has a track record on this point. SEA gave out the source to ARC, Phil gave
away no such thing for PKARC. In fact, if I remember correctly, people had
to clobber Phil over the head to get him to tell the world what the SQUASHED
file format was.

Phil has made alot of friends by providing a faster archiver with a better
compression scheme, but he has done little or nothing to further the
public domain. No one gets to stare at his source to gleen new methods of
doing things, or to figure out how to handle SQUASHED archives. Those who
say SEA is evil should consider Phil's track record just a TAD more closely.

Now I'm going to make one more leap that I'm sure is going to get my mailbox
filled with crap from people who love Phil and won't read and UNDERSTAND
what I'm about to say.

I think the person responsible for the whole ARC mess is one Phil Katz, not
SEA. We have only Mr. Katz to thank for getting SEA so pissed off that they
decided they had to take a new posture on ARC. Mr. Katz went in and started
taking away SEA's business without paying the dues that SEA has paid in full.
There are no VMS/Unix/Atari ST/Commodore C64/CPM/Amiga PKARC programs folks.
And there never would have been since Phil never released his source.

Just look at it from SEA's viewpoint for a moment, you've created the industry
standard and fostered it's growth across a BROAD range of computers. But the
only place you get any pay back is from the IBM PC market. And then this
Phil Katz guy decides he's going to go after it, without having any of the
overhead from being the industry standard. He can even add this SQUASHED
format with ease since he has no concerns of VMS/UNIX/AMIGA etc...

What would you do? Most people say SEA deserves to loose this conflict because
they didn't keep improving ARC and making it faster. But this is patently
untrue. What was ARC 5.21? Chopped liver? And never forget that if they add a
feature to ARC it has a wide impact which will elicit the same howls of
protest that PKARC's SQUASHED format brought.

Surely people can remember back to when Phil was public enemy number one with
SYSOPS over his SQUASHED format? GEnie just recently started letting people
post arc files using this format. And only in the IBM roundtables since there
is no PKARC for the other computers.

I wonder if anyone out there has noticed the parallels between Ollie North and
Phil Katz? Both of these guys stand a snow ball's chance in hell of winning
in court, but the media has turned both of them into heros of the common man.
(Only Phil doesn't have Ronnie to give him a pardon. :)

Almost overnight Phil has gone from public enemy number one with his SQUASHED
format, to poor old Phil attacked by big bad SEA.

I'm sorry folks but I just can't see SEA as the big bad evil thing that Keith
seems to think they are. If they were so damn evil why did they try to
resolve this issue with Phil rather than just going after him up front. They
tried to work it out with him and Phil told 'em to take a long walk on a short
pier, no counter offer or anything, just go to hell. And probably sat back
with a huge grin on his face saying "NOW we've really got 'em on the run boys!
Keep up the pressure!"

And then when they sued him they let him off the hook with a damn nice out
of court settlement. SEA didn't have to be anywhere near as nice in letting
Phil off the hook. It isn't SEA's fault that Phil's lawyer didn't spot the
landmines in the agreement. If Phil had lived up to the letter of the
agreement I'm sure SEA's lawyer would have been nashing his teeth in
disappointment. But let's face it, he's a lawyer, he ain't supposed to be
a good guy, he's supposed to WIN. The landmines were probably his idea not
SEA's.

Like alot of people I got REALLY steamed when this issue first started to
break upon the world. I was all set to convert my .arc files to .zoo files
and write letters to SEA telling them to shove ARC sideways. But then unlike
most people I thought about this whole mess and ANALYZED what was REALLY going
on. I tried to seperate the mud from the cause/effect/motivations of the whole
issue.

I was surprised to find myself coming around to SEA's view of this thing. I
mean when you get right down to it who's done the most good for the most
people? SEA or PKWare? Who's been more open? SEA or PKWare? Who's had the
larger investment in ARC? SEA or PKWare? And if PKWare were to run SEA out
of the ARC business who would be hurt? SEA or ME?

The last issue is what finally made me wake up folks. I've heard several
times that it's always a good idea to take something and reverse it to
see if you would like it the other way around, and THEN decide what to do.

SEA gave us source code to ARC so everyone could use it. PKWare gave us
nothing. If SEA were to give up on ARC those of us that depended on that
source code for non-PCDOS versions of ARC would be screwed since PKWare
never gave away their source. Never promised to either. Never gave away
any code fragments for those of us on non-PCDOS machines so we could read/write
SQUASHED arc files.

After looking at it that way I just couldn't swallow Keith's garbage anymore.
And further study revealed all that I have laid out above.

But just keep that above thought in mind when you pick a side to root for,
who's really trying to keep people from using their code?

I'm amazed that with the leaps people have taken to see SEA in a negative
light that more people haven't done the same with PKWare.

Let's look at this whole mess through "Ollie glasses", but with a different
tilt.

Phil has managed, through what would seem to be his close buddy Keith, to
start a anti-SEA movement. Everywhere you look you hear the chant "Kill SEA!
Kill SEA! Down with ARC! I want Phil's new product WHATEVER it is!"

Boy, wouldn't you LOVE to be in that position?

But it gets better. He now runs around saying his new program will use a
public domain file format and he will give away a library of routines for
reading/writing the new file format.

He doesn't have to promise to give away all the source code, since he has
cleverly made the two topics of file format and reading/writing it HOT
buttons for the public. They see he's going to be a good guy about these
hot buttons and look no further. Like how those folks using machines Phil
has no intrest in are going to get a copy of his new program to use? Phil is
going to have a whole new market open to him on the PC universe and if he
succeeds in the current campaign he'll make a PILE of money off it. He's not
about to repeat SEA's mistake and give away the source code to HIS program
so he can face his own Phil Katz some day.

I'm sure he's ALL in favor of this new file archiver. I'm sure he also gets
a real grin on his face when people say "I'm going to use his new program,
whatever it does." I'm sure he'll chuckle all the way to the bank as well.

Off with the "Ollie glasses".

Personally I'd like to see Rahul succeed with his ZOO program. I have no real
fondness for ARC, and like his ZOO program MUCH better. Of all the players
in this whole issue I think he's the one who should get public support. The
man has been responsive to public attention about his program, fixed bugs,
added features, and has consistantly NOT tried to turn a dime off it. When
people wanted to force money on him he told 'em to give it to a charity instead.

I ask anyone who has read this far down into this rather long article, which
standard would you rather use? The one created by the guy chuckling all the
way to the bank, or the one created by the guy who takes pride in doing a good
job in creating a standard and only asks for a little recognition? (And a
chance to tilt at windmills :) Who can we trust more not to screw us? The guy
who's livelyhood DEPENDS on the new standard, or the guy who's got a job to
support him that doesn't depend on his standard's success or failure?

I mean if someone makes a clone ZOO is Rahul going to run around screaming
"You're taking food out of the mouths of my wife and children!"???

I think not.

And from a USENET standpoint who should we back? Rahul who is a user of this
forum, giver of his time as a moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc, or some other
person who's never used USENET? I can sit here and type a message to Rahul
using USENET and get a response from him, how about Phil? (or SEA for that
matter) Shouldn't we USENETers be supporting one of our own if given the
chance?

I hope this article will wake a few more people up to the dangers of this new
course that Keith is trying to steer us all onto.

But there is one thing he is right about, we can no longer, thanks to Phil
Katz, rely on ARC as the industry standard. Phil has forced SEA into a postion
that they can no longer back down from. A new industry standard will HAVE
to be selected at this point. Not because SEA is evil, but because Phil Katz
backed them into a corner and they were FORCED to act as any reasonable person
would when their livelyhood is threatened.

Thanks a WHOLE LOT Phil. :(

I just hope Keith wakes up before Phil leads him and everyone else into
creating this SEA mess all over again. Make no mistake, given the choice of
making a living off his new standard or giving it away, Phil is going to
choose making a living. And he WILL, defend it at all costs just as SEA has
done. Mark my words well on that point. Phil is just as human as the folks
at SEA, and if put into the same position we can expect him to react in
similar fashion.

---------------------- The Promised Concise Summary --------------------------

Phil backed SEA into a corner, wouldn't understand their position or if he
did didn't give a damn, and forced them to take their best shot. They did,
scored what I think will be a mortal blow to Phil (thanks to their lawyer),
and now Phil is running around going "The bastards shot me! And I didn't do
anything to them! Help me! Help me!" Only problem is SEA didn't shoot him,
they nuked him. And the fallout is covering alot of other people. I'm sure
SEA is just as unhappy as everyone else that the weapon their lawyer gave
them to use was a tac nuke rather than a Detonics Combat Master with Glaser
safety slugs.

Let's learn from this, and not blindly jump right back into the same mess.
The real lesson here is not that trademarks and copyrights are evil, but
rather that people will act rashly when their livelyhood is threatened. Let's
back a standard where no one has to worry about their families eating if
their version of the extractor/creator program isn't a financial success.

Just as with guns, the tools themselves aren't evil, it's the people that use
them. And sometimes they aren't evil, they're just desperate.

I think we need both gun control and lawyer control. Both areas are far too
wide open. Guns should only be in the hands of people who know full well
how to use them and what will happen when they do. Lawyers can be JUST as
destructive to a person's life as a saturday night special in the hands of
a coked up teenager. As SEA has demonstrated, lawyers are potent weapons
with far reaching side effects if they are not used properly.

And this is where lawyers everywhere should hang their heads in shame. A gun
doesn't know any better, lawyers should. (In all fairness there are still
a FEW lawyers that aren't win-at-all-costs killing machines but there are far
too many who are)

Scott Turner
scotty@l5comp -or- uunet!l5comp!scotty