Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!sun-arpa!male!pitstop!sun!pepper!cmcmanis From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: PD Disks Keywords: PD Disks, Money Message-ID: <100483@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> Date: 21 Apr 89 22:28:56 GMT References: <38833@bbn.COM> <99856@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <38944@bbn.COM> Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis) Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View Lines: 73 In article <38944@bbn.COM> (David Nye) comments on my article : > That's just the point, PD is suposed to be non-profit by definition. This is the point. PD stands for "Public Domain." Public Domain has *very* specific legal definition. The definition states that you can do *anything* you want with PD material. About the only thing you can't do is control what someone else does with that material. If a disk or a program is in the public domain and I sell copies of it for $80 each to people who don't know that they can get it for free, unless I've told them that they can't get it anywhere else (which would be fraud) I am operating on a completely legal and up and up business. I'm no worse than the guy selling $3 12 oz cans of Coca Cola at the stadium. > These companies are trying to make a profit by selling the disks not as > a SERVICE to the AMIGA community, such as Fred FISH, but for profit. And there is nothing illegal or immoral about it. One would think that in a free market worked, then these people would have no customers since no one would pay money for something they could get for free and yet people still pay $7.00, $8.00, even $10.00 a disk for this stuff. So what are they paying for?!?! Ask them and you would find out they they are paying for *service*. The service that gets these PD programs, collects them onto a disk and then offers them a catalog from which to choose programs from. > I can not blame them for wanting to make a profit, but PD, by definition, > should only FREELY distributed, not SOLD for PROFIT at the expence of > Joe Programmer who was gracious enough to put his program into the > public domain. The companies should stay out of the PD distribution > game or at least not let there prices creep up from $3.00 last year > to $8.00 this year. They aren't selling Joe Programmers software for a profit, they are selling *easy access* to Joe Programmers software for a profit. Ask someone, "You have a choice of $10 for this disk with 400K of programs on it, or 10 calls to 10 bbs' which will take about 6 hours to collect this same set of programs for "free". Well what is 6hrs worth to you? $10? It is to me. If Joe Programmer puts his program in the public domain then he shouldn't care squat if someone else pays a third party $10/disk to find various programmers like Joe who are contributing this stuff, rounding them up, and putting them together on one disk for him to use. If Joes doesn't want this to happen he *RETAINS* the copyright and makes the restriction that copies cannot be sold for more than media cost + 10% or whatever the hell he feels like, and if one of these companies trys to sell his program for $10 he sues them ! He'll win, because he has clearly stated his restrictions and they have clearly violated them! So where the hell is the problem? > Chuck, > I think this is a serious issue and from the E-Mail response I've >gotten MANY other people think so also. It is a serious issue, many software authors are seriously undereducated as to which is more valuable, a display hack that inverts the display or a collection of 20 display hacks that do 20 different things to the display. A collection of PD works *can* be copyrighted and sold by the rightful copyright holder (the collector) for whatever profit they can get out of it. If you don't like this then *protect* your software, retain that copyright and put these guys out of business. Don't be suprised if people like Fred don't distribute your stuff either though. With understanding will come enlightenment and you will see that there isn't really a problem at all. [P.S. Quit putting "E-Mail" in your followup-to line, that screws up rn something terrible. Thanks.] --Chuck McManis uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you. "A most excellent barbarian ... Genghis Kahn!"