Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!bobmon
From: bobmon@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (RAMontante)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: ZMODEM
Summary: DSZ is a shareware program.  Other prog's also do zmodem.
Message-ID: <18205@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Date: 4 Mar 89 04:32:55 GMT
Reply-To: bobmon@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (RAMontante)
Distribution: usa
Organization: malkaryotic
Lines: 36

vg55611@ihuxy.UUCP (55611-Gopal,V.P.) <2880@ihuxy.ATT.COM> :
-
-I'd like to point out that whether DSZ protocol is public domain or not
-is irrelevant to the question of whether you should pay for DSZ.  There
-seems to be some kind of assumption here that when you pay for DSZ you
-are paying for the ZMODEM protocol.  I think this is not true.  You are
-paying for the software development effort that went into implemementing
-this protocol i.e. you are paying for the code, not the protocol.  There

Indeed.  There are other programs that provide zmodem, and its predecessors
ymodem and xmodem.  Procomm, for example, does a very nice job with ymodem.
I registered DSZ nonetheless, not because it "gives me zmodem", but because
this implementation has been a particularly reliable and well-done program.
Even when it falls back to ymodem it works better than Procomm's implemen-
tation, and Procomm isn't bad (IMHO).

Meanwhile Bronis Vidugiris complains (essentially) that the DSZ commercial
is too obnoxious.  Well, okay, but I've seen much much _more_ obnoxious and
obtrusive commercials in shareware.  When used as intended, that is as a
file-transfer add-on to a terminal program (it doesn't claim to be a great
terminal emulator), you get the commercial AFTER it has done its job -- most
shareware gives you the commercial before you ever get to see it in action.

As for the documentation, yes it does start off a bit preachy.  (So does the
Procomm manual.  Also, ndmake makes a pitch; list has a pitch....) Once you
get past that you have a very detailed, dense manual, with some of the same
incomprehensibility that I know and love in UNIX documentation.

You are certainly justified in seeking a free implementation of the zmodem
protocol if you don't like DSZ.  But it seems a bit churlish to condemn
Forsberg for a shareware commercial that is in fact quite mild compared to
the obtrusive, partially-crippled things that often turn up on BBS'es.
-- 
Those who do not understand MSDOS are  | Bob Montante (bobmon@cs.indiana.edu)
condemned to write glowingly of it in  | Computer Science Department
slick, short-lived magazines.          | Indiana University, Bloomington IN