Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!batcomputer!itsgw!steinmetz!davidsen
From: davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: zoo'ed IBM-PC binaries?
Message-ID: <13255@steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 25 Feb 89 03:42:06 GMT
References: <77800005@sts> <5978@sdcsvax.UCSD.Edu> <13229@steinmetz.ge.com> <17652@genrad.UUCP>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 52

In article <17652@genrad.UUCP> jpn@teddy.UUCP (John P. Nelson) writes:
| In article <13229@steinmetz.ge.com> davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes:
| >I'm in favor of switching now. arc is not available on UNIX machines,
| 
| I really don't understand why people keep saying that.  The UNIX source
| has been posted to usenet at least 3 times.  The latest version that
| was posted is a port of ARC 5.21 with PKARC extensions (i.e.
| squashing), and it compiles on both System V and Berkeley.  This
	I don't know why others say it, I say it because the version
	with PK extensions doesn't work on anything I can access except
	Ultrix and SunOS (BSD environment). It doesn't seem to work on
	Xenix/286 (okay it's a segmented archetecture), Xenix/386
	(32bit, V.3), Encore (BSD) or even Cray2 (V.?). zoo runs on all
	of them, first try.
| version was even blessed by Thom Henderson (UNIX users can run it
| without oblication to SEA:  that is not SEA's primary market).  This
| source has been available and stable for about a year.  What MORE
| do you want?
	It's nice that it compiles, but I really would like it to run...
	I got the original posting running on most machines and later
	got several other versions. Some save the files with uppercase
	names, some lower, some accept and strip path info, etc.
| 
| >I expect arc v6.00 to be ported to UNIX soon (source is included) but
| >that doesn't solve the basic problem.
| 
| I'm not sure what you consider the basic problem.  I don't think the
	It takes a lot of hacking to get arc to compile on many systems,
	and even more to make it work. Why should we do that when zoo is
	here and now.
| SEA copyright restrictions are any more severe than the ZOO copyright
| restrictions.  Neither are public domain.
	You are not asked to send money for zoo, under any circumstances.

| I will concede that ZOO is a more portable program (as well as being a
| more CAPABLE program), and probably deserves to be the new standard.
| But what we REALLY need is a PUBLIC DOMAIN archive program with NO
| RESTRICTIONS WHATSOEVER.  Until that arrives, I don't see any reason to
| upset the applecart.
	I have mixed feelings about that... with a totally public domain
	version we could wind up with incompatible versions. As long as
	there is a copyright other versions are discouraged, at least. I
	don't distribute my hacked zoo, not because I worry about being
	sued, but because there aren't supposed to be any incompatible
	derivitive works. That's fair.

Let's hope that Rahul just cuts the restrictions down to "don't
sell it" and lets it go at that.
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me