[Coco] Window Master & "Super Basic"

[Andrew]

> Message: 3
> Date: Sat, 14 May 2005 09:49:50 -0700
> From: "John R. Hogerhuis" <jhoger at pobox.com>
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Window Master & "Super Basic"
> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Message-ID: <1116089390.17723.226.camel at aragorn>
> Content-Type: text/plain
> 
> On Sat, 2005-05-14 at 08:59 -0700, Andrew wrote:
> 
> 
>>What do others here think about this?
>>
> 
> 
> In think that it's up to Bill. Hopefully he can see the logic of the
> situation and either sell new copies, make a non-protected version, or
> authorize us to break the copy protection and make copies ourselves.
> 
> For your own personal backup copy of vintage software, I believe the
> librarian of congress made an exception to DMCA which allows breaking
> the copy protection for the purpose of making backups.

Right now, I am interested in preserving my own copy, by whatever means 
I can - currently, that means keeping the original floppies safe, and 
not messing with them. But these things are old, and getting older - 
stuff just simply degrades, which is what happenned to my Gates of 
Delerium game disk before it was rescued. Some of my other floppies 
(personal stuff) met the same fate before I could do anything with them. 
Most of my stuff I managed to make DSK copies and stick on a CD-R before 
it was too late. I built an emulator box (using JV's emulators and DOS) 
so I could continue to enjoy this stuff as time permits.

> But generally if he's still actively interested in this stuff, we should
> respect his wishes whatever they are.

I agree on this - but I repeatedly asked him if he was still selling the 
software, and he never answered me on this. He seemed rather 
non-commital about the whole thing - something he did tell me was that 
the compiler should be re-written instead of trying to preserve it 
(which makes no sense - and isn't something I could do, anyhow). I don't 
understand the entire situation - he doesn't appear to have any 
involvement with this list, at least on an active basis. If he just came 
out and said one way or the other what his wishes are, that would be one 
thing - but that is the problem, I don't know what they are, and no one 
else does, either. I don't want to see this excellent software just "go 
away", either - that is nearly what happenned with the Diecom collection 
- indeed, there are still pieces of it which may never be recovered.

The thing that really ticks me off about all of this - in both my cases 
with Diecom's Gates of Delerium and Cer-Comp's Window Master and 
CBASIC-3 - is I am the legitimate owner of all of this - I have full 
manuals, original disks, etc - and the software is degrading without me 
being able to easily save it. It would be like a car that you own, that 
you can't fix - a hood welded shut (then again I think about that Audi 
or GM's Hi-Wire concept car - and I shudder).

Frustrating...

> 
> This sort of problem is why in my commercial software I do not put any
> copy protection, and why I don't buy any software with copy protection.
> It also is a part of the reason that I spend more of my time on open
> platforms like Linux where this sort of behavior of treating users like
> potential criminals is not tolerated.

I hear and agree with you there. I switched to Linux and Open Source 
solutions a long time ago precisely because of this, among other 
reasons. For my own personal development work, when I release it (which 
isn't much these days - but on occasion I do) I prefer to release under 
the GPL - I figure if I am going to go through all of that hard work to 
give away my software, the least I can do is make sure that no one else 
- ever - short of a serious abridgement of copyright - can lock the code 
up in a proprietary wrapper. I want to be able to teach future 
generations of coders how to do something, like I learned from all of 
those issues of the Rainbow so long ago. Personally, despite all of his 
faults (and he has them, that is certain) - Richard Stallman is a smart 
individual. I have no doubt that he and his lawyers very carefully 
crafted the GPL to create a license that in one way or another will 
likely guarantee the forcing of making licenses either irrelevant, or 
force the government to do some serious tinkering with copyright, which 
who knows how that will play out.

I have a lot of fears about the way things are going in our country 
today - I don't want to get off topic - copyright and the issues 
surrounding it currently are a small part of all of the issues. Our 
rights as supposedly free citizens to create and distribute ideas as we 
see fit seem to be under major fire, mainly by corporations who would 
rather that the citizenry not have a say in anything. They seem to be 
winning on so many fronts, and the frustrating part is that the people 
appear to rather have the "breads and circuses" rather than be a free 
populace.

That is a very frightening, and disheartening, thing...

Andrew