hedrick@aramis.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) (02/17/88)
I've just entered the IBM PC community. I'm also effectively more or less just left it -- I'm using microport Unix, for which software comes from the Unix community rather than the PC community. Fortunately the Unix community hasn't yet discovered shareware. During my brief flirtation with MS-DOS, I spent some time looking around for software. Fortunately, I'm in a situation with good network access, so I have a copy of the PC Blue library on a campus machine (I think we buy a subscription from the NY PC club), and I can FTP things from Simtel. I had noticed these discussions of shareware before, and I thought: Gee, what a neat idea. Too bad these cads aren't willing to pay. Well, now I've had a bit more experience, and I'm feeling more sympathetic with the cads. My major gripe is that by and large I don't know in advance what is shareware and what isn't. Defenders of shareware say more or less that if I don't like it, I just shouldn't get any. But typically it takes me a couple of hours to get a major package from Simtel. Part of that is the wretched Arpanet delays (even at odd hours, which I do use), and part of it is waiting for kermit to upload the thing. Then I get it and I find that it is shareware. I have just spent about an order of magnitude more time getting the thing (my consulting rates are about $150/hour) than the cost of the product. I have also used both Rutgers and DoD resources to deliver what is in the final analysis a commercial product. Sure, I can delete the thing, but the damage is done. I feel sort of like a heel complaining, because I know that these guys aren't really trying to get rich off the thing. They're just trying to make a little money to help support their hacking on the side, and they're surely more friendly than big bad .... But darn it, when you include a statement that people are supposed to pay you, and word it as a quasi-legal licensing agreement, it's a commercial product. (I am not concerned about a statement that simply says if you like it, they'd appreciate a donation. That's not very different from the Gnu project, which is also happy to accept your donation.) There are also two more subtle problems that show up in a university environment: I am trying to get the university to make a clear stand for intellectual property and against software piracy. I don't like having this class of software that we give out (we can't really avoid it - any collection of PD software we might get would be polluted with it) that has quasi-legal claims that you should pay them but which as far as I can tell few people take seriously. It tends to get our students used to the concept that everybody cheats in the software area. Secondly, there are issues about use of university resources that I'm not sure I'm clear about. We are using a lot of disk space storing what our managers think is public-domain software. In fact, a fair chunk of it turns out to be a low-overhead delivery channel for commercial software. I'm not sure that we would object to this. After all, the University has marketing agreements with IBM, Apple, Zenith, etc., to help students and faculty get systems at a discount, and our Purchasing people do various things to facilitate it. So it's not ridiculous that we might want to facilitate access to low-cost software. But I don't think the people involved know that is what they are doing. They think they are supplying a PD library. And as far as I can tell, it is impossible to know how much of that library is in fact shareware, without dearc'ing all the files and looking through all the documentation. The issue with Simtel is even messier, because use of the Arpanet to deliver commercial products is just flat-out illegal. Similar concerns apply to Usenet, particularly those portions that pass over the Arpanet. Frankly, I'm relieved to have moved my work to Unix, where we don't have such a concept.
wnp@dcs.UUCP (Wolf N. Paul) (02/18/88)
In article <2990@aramis.rutgers.edu> hedrick@aramis.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) writes: > >My major gripe is that by and large I don't know in advance what is >shareware and what isn't. Defenders of shareware say more or less >that if I don't like it, I just shouldn't get any. But typically it >takes me a couple of hours to get a major package from Simtel. Part >of that is the wretched Arpanet delays (even at odd hours, which I do >use), and part of it is waiting for kermit to upload the thing. Then >I get it and I find that it is shareware. I have just spent about an >order of magnitude more time getting the thing (my consulting rates >are about $150/hour) than the cost of the product. I have also used >both Rutgers and DoD resources to deliver what is in the final >analysis a commercial product. The problem here is that of course the people running SIMTEL are responsible to make sure that there are NO COMMERCIAL packages on their machine; they are responsible to decide whether shareware falls into that category. You as the user should not have to worry about the legality - if they offer it for anon. FTP, they are in fact suggesting to you that it is legal to FTP it. The issue of wasted time when you find out that a package is shareware could be addressed by lobbying the SIMTEL operators to identify shareware as such in their index. The same thing applies, of course to any other supplier of freely-distributable software, and as far as I know, both on CompuServe and Genie the descriptions of download files include notice of shareware status. As for your university, the managers need to made aware of the distinction between freeware and PD on one hand, and shareware on the other. PC Blue should also be challenged to include some identification of shareware in their indexes. -- Wolf N. Paul Phone: (214) 306-9101 (h) (214) 404-8077 (w) 3387 Sam Rayburn Run UUCP: ihnp4!killer!{dcs, doulos}!wnp Carrollton, TX 75007 INTERNET: wnp@dcs.UUCP ESL: 62832882 Pat Robertson does NOT speak for all evangelical Christians--not for me, anyway!