Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!lsuc!jimomura
From: jimomura@lsuc.on.ca (Jim Omura)
Subject: Re: Publishers
Organization: Consultant, Toronto
Date: Tue, 14 May 1991 12:43:16 GMT
Message-ID: <1991May14.124316.29136@lsuc.on.ca>
References: <1991May10.185652.19983@lsuc.on.ca> <1991May11.211802.22320@wam.umd.edu> <1325@zinn.MV.COM>

In article <1325@zinn.MV.COM> kgg@zinn.MV.COM (Kenn Goutal) writes:
>In article <1991May11.211802.22320@wam.umd.edu> dmb@wam.umd.edu (David M. Baggett) writes:
>>[I'm posting the following on behalf of Michal Jaegermann
>><NTOMCZAK@vm.ucs.UAlberta.CA>, who gets c.s.a.st through a digest. - dmb]
>>From: Michal Jaegermann <NTOMCZAK@vm.ucs.UAlberta.CA>
>>
>>Jim Omura (lsuc!jimomura) posted recently in c.s.a.s. long diatribe
>>against different forms of software you can find on usenet, different
>>archives and bbs's.  He is definitely against stuff where copyright
>>notice is included and somehow managed to convey a feeling that
>>nets are ripping him off.

...

>Oh, I didn't get that "feeling" at all.
>The message I got was that his impression is that he cannot expect to make
>a living (or even a part of one) by distributing products as shareware
>because of the preponderence of individuals who feel no compunctions about
>paying the author for the software they use and because of the preponderence
>of individuals who feel no compunctions about distributing shareware in
>ways that make it hard to tell what's shareware, what's freeware, and
>what's public domain.
>
>I gather that there are some authors who even today manages to defray
>a small part of their development costs from shareware revenues,
>but I also gather that that is less true today than it was for a while,
>and in any case that quite a different story from meeting costs and
>exceeding them enough to buy a sandwich or two.
>So, my impression accords with what I believe is his impression.

>This is not at all to say that "the nets are ripping [people] off".
>As long as one understands from the outset that the ground rules only
>allow for posting stuff pro bono, and posts stuff with that understanding,
>one is not being ripped off.  One who does not understand that, well,
>is still not being ripped off, but is caught in a misconception.

     Well, essentially you've understood what I was saying, but
Michal wasn't entirely wrong about what I said either.  I didn't
say that *I* was being ripped off, but that to an extent, yes,
sometimes people are being denied use of material from the Net
whereas they are being put to the expense of passing it around
and to that extent, they *can* claim to being ripped off.  And
they are given the opportunity to actually see it happen, which
makes it quite brazen.  Let's look at a specific example.  As far
as I remember, Lattice used to be on the Net.  I don't know if they
still are, but I'm fairly sure they were a few years ago.  Now
Sozobon C is not "begware" at this time.  That is to say, they
are not asking for money for their current distribution, so please
keep in mind that this is only hypothetical.  Also, the Sozobon
authors are *not* on the Net and never "sent it down the Net".
But let's say that one of the authors of Sozobon had sent a
copy of Sozobon C down the net with a request for $30.00.  Not
unreasonable, and not unusual.  Now the 'lattice' site would have
the great joy of passing on a product that was probably taking
money from their sales, and being expect to pay themselves, in
terms of connections facilities and storage, as well as messages
assisting people later who use Sozobon C.

     Now that's an extreme case.  But 1 of the points I was making
was that even the least restrictive restrictions are still going
be a reduction of the value of the Net to *somebody*.  And to
an extent, we have generally agreed that we'll live with it.  Me
too, obviously.  But that doesn't mean that there isn't a "better
way."

     What's interesting is that there are so many people who are
"new" to the Net that this whole argument seems to be new to a lot
of people.  This is one of the oldest historical arguments on the Net.
It may surprise many here, but there has *always* been a disagreement
with posting of binary files, for example, if you don't post the
source code.  Why?  Well, you are *supposed* to share your material
with the widest possible number of people on the Net.  Posting a
binary which can't be ported to other machines was (and in many peoples
opinion still is) a violation of Nettiquette.  And "those people"
are for the most part the very people who were the main builders
of the Net.  What do you think "those people" think when they see
a file that is Binary, Copyrighted, and *demands* money?

     It was this "free exchange" of information that was the very
basis of the Net.  And I think it's what makes it better than FidoNet,
which was *not* based on this principle so much as it was based
on the fact that they saw what was happening on the InterNet and
realized that such a thing was good.

>What's disconcerting to me that while I can understand that Usenet
>*cannot* be used as a vehicle for commercial enterprise, but *must*
>be maintained as a pro bono vehicle, there is no reason why this
>should be true of the commercial systems such as CIS, GEnie, etc,
>yet this seems to be the case.  That is, there does *not* seem to
>be a commercial system which can be used as a vehicle for marketing
>and selling software products.  (Jim's article and maybe one of the
>followups mentioned STart and a couple other systems.  I know nothing
>about them.  Maybe one or more of them fulfills this need.)

     Exactly true!  But not simply because CIS, Genie, BIX and Delphi
are commercial.  That has nothing to do with it.  The point is that
what *you* download from CIS is something that both you and CIS have
agreed to be a part of.  They are *not* sending you Sozobon C by
using Lattices's expenses.  The only people involved are you and CIS.


     What I think a lot of people should do is stick a sign on
their monitors and read it every now and then:

"The Net is NOT a BBS."

     Anyway, this is really not that important to me, so hopefully,
unless someone else is getting something out of it, it'll end soon.

-- 
Jim Omura, 2A King George's Drive, Toronto, (416) 652-3880
lsuc!jimomura
Byte Information eXchange: jimomura
