martin@IRO.UMontreal.CA (Daniel Martin) (08/03/90)
[-]
G'day,
The idea of a CD-ROM containing all the fish programs is at first
glance excellent.
The main advantage, is the cost of producing a CD. The master cost
less than 3000$, and each copies less than 5$ each, if produced in quantity.
The CD-ROM readers are also cheap nowadays.
Other 'better' technology are now available, but not yet standard.
We have here at udem WORMs, videodiscs, floptical (the NeXT ones), all connected
to our amigas. How many can say the same, I wonder. To produce an archive like
this, you need a market here and now, with standard, available and cheap
technologies.
One problem with CD-ROM, is that they are read only. The moment you
produce the disc, it's already out of date. And since the whole library
of fish disc is not enough to fill it yet, you can't publish update discs
each months... So to be up to date, you have to go back to your old ftp
habits until the next disc.
Of course you can fill the disc with commercial stuff, magazines, reviews,
demos, pub, images, and of course usenet comp.sys.amiga.* articles, etc. I
wonder if there is more than 600megs of stuff produced each 3 moths. And I
wonder if user would really care to consult that amount of information (see
Information Anxiety, by R.S. Wurman, Doubleday, 1989, for a good view on
that).
In medical field, you can subscribe yearly to a CD-ROM club. All articles
submitted in the field is written on CDs. They are published each 3 months
and contains *all* articles submitted since the last disc published. That
means when you receive a new disc, you can discard the previous one since it
contains it's info plus the new ones. When the disc is filled, you keep
it, since it become a filled archive. With yearly fee (around 700$), all discs
are sold in advance, and 3 months update seem fair.
It is a bit early for users to start on this project since CD-ROMs are
not common in the Amiga world yet. What are the exact cost of Commodore's
CD-ROM drives and are they easily hookable on the Amiga family? (I know the
CDTV is a strip down A500, but your never sure...). Will they ship the drives
with A3000? Will they create the market??? Are they ready to invest in
this?
I would say we have the means and the knowledge to do it at our lab here,
but there is no market yet. To go on with this project, you need 100 users at
say 30$ per discs (prepaid) before doing it. I really doubt that that many
people have an interest >and< the CD-ROM.
Just for fun, send me mail if you want a Fish Archive disc AND have a CD-ROM
hooked up to your amiga. Would you be interested in a yearly subscription
consisting of 1 disc per 3 months of new Fish archives, news from the
comp.sys.amiga.* and perhaps PD demo & third party for say 200$ a year?
I'm very interested to see how many answer I'll get. I'll summarize the
to the net.
Daniel.
--
// Daniel Martin Universite de Montreal \\
// MediaLab, ca vous regarde! C.P. 6128, Succursale A, \\
\\// Mail: martin@IRO.UMontreal.CA Montreal (Quebec), CANADA, \\//
\/ UUCP: ..utai!mcgill-vision!iros52!martin H3C 3J7, Tel: (514)343-7009 \/martin@IRO.UMontreal.CA (Daniel Martin) (08/03/90)
[-]
With all this, I forgot the real questions though: PD on fish can be FREELY
distributed. Making people pay, even 30$ for a collection of
360 PD discs, can cause you problem right? How does Fred Fish fixed the 5$
fee for the Fish disks? Can he actually be sued by someone who can prove that
he had made even 1 cents on each disks?
If Commodore is distributing it with it's machine, can people
sue them for making money out of PD (on the proof that people buy more
Amiga when the CD's is in the package - or something to that effect) ?
Daniel.
--
// Daniel Martin Universite de Montreal \\
// MediaLab, ca vous regarde! C.P. 6128, Succursale A, \\
\\// Mail: martin@IRO.UMontreal.CA Montreal (Quebec), CANADA, \\//
\/ UUCP: ..utai!mcgill-vision!iros52!martin H3C 3J7, Tel: (514)343-7009 \/kherron@ms.uky.edu (Kenneth Herron) (08/03/90)
It always amazes me how hard it is for people to grasp the idea of public domain software... martin@IRO.UMontreal.CA (Daniel Martin) writes: > With all this, I forgot the real questions though: PD on fish can be FREELY >distributed. Making people pay, even 30$ for a collection of >360 PD discs, can cause you problem right? How does Fred Fish fixed the 5$ >fee for the Fish disks? Can he actually be sued by someone who can prove that >he had made even 1 cents on each disks? "Can be freely distributed" doesn't mean "has to be." Public domain means NOBODY OWNS IT and ANYONE CAN DO ANYTHING WITH IT. Let me repeat that: ---> Nobody owns it and anyone can do anything with it. <--- Mr. Fish can charge $1000 per disk, patch every program to say "This is a Fred Fish Production" and he WOULDN'T BE BREAKING ANY LAWS! You, Mr. Martin, could take a set of Fish disks, replace all of Fred's text with your own text, and release them as "Martin Disks" at $4.50 each and you WOULDN'T BE BREAKING ANY LAWS! You could also run off copies of those Fish disks and give them away on street corners and you WOULDN'T BE BREAKING ANY LAWS! > If Commodore is distributing it with it's machine, can people >sue them for making money out of PD (on the proof that people buy more >Amiga when the CD's is in the package - or something to that effect) ? It's not illegal to make money from public domain software. If Commodore or Fred Fish or you or I decided to sell disks containing PD software, that's okay. None of us would have to get permission from the author or from each other. Anyone else who had copies of the software we sold, INCLUDING OUR CUSTOMERS, could also sell copies of it OR GIVE THEM AWAY. Because none of us own any rights to the software. Reality check: Not everything I've said is strictly true, because not all of the software on Fish disks is public domain. If Fred Fish were to patch a copyrighted-but-freely-distributable or shareware program, he *would* be breaking the law (at least if he then put it on a fish disk). If you rereleased Fish disks as Martin disks you'd probably have a problem with the distribution terms on one of the copyrighted programs. Commodore would have the same problem, though I'm sure they'd check it out first. One last thought: $30 for the equivalent of 360 disks of software sounds quite reasonable to me. That's less than 1/10 the cost of those 360 disks. Kenneth Herron
BAXTER_A@wehi.dn.mu.oz (08/07/90)
Organization: Walter & Eliza Hall Institute Lines: 76 In article <kherron.649688764@s.ms.uky.edu>, kherron@ms.uky.edu (Kenneth Herron) writes: > It always amazes me how hard it is for people to grasp the idea of > public domain software... > > martin@IRO.UMontreal.CA (Daniel Martin) writes: > >> With all this, I forgot the real questions though: PD on fish can be FREELY >>distributed. Making people pay, even 30$ for a collection of >>360 PD discs, can cause you problem right? How does Fred Fish fixed the 5$ >>fee for the Fish disks? Can he actually be sued by someone who can prove that >>he had made even 1 cents on each disks? > > "Can be freely distributed" doesn't mean "has to be." Public domain means > NOBODY OWNS IT and ANYONE CAN DO ANYTHING WITH IT. Let me repeat that: > > ---> Nobody owns it and anyone can do anything with it. <--- The fish collection is not (all) public domain. Nobody can do anything with it unless the actions meet all the distribution requirements of the programs included. > > Mr. Fish can charge $1000 per disk, patch every program to say "This is a > Fred Fish Production" and he WOULDN'T BE BREAKING ANY LAWS! You, Mr. > Martin, could take a set of Fish disks, replace all of Fred's text with > your own text, and release them as "Martin Disks" at $4.50 each and you > WOULDN'T BE BREAKING ANY LAWS! You could also run off copies of those > Fish disks and give them away on street corners and you WOULDN'T BE > BREAKING ANY LAWS! You would. And my law suit would hit you so hard and so fast your head would spin. > >> If Commodore is distributing it with it's machine, can people >>sue them for making money out of PD (on the proof that people buy more >>Amiga when the CD's is in the package - or something to that effect) ? > > It's not illegal to make money from public domain software. If Commodore > or Fred Fish or you or I decided to sell disks containing PD software, > that's okay. Again: Fred does not sell public domain discs. He distributes as a service discs of software which is freely distributable. None of us would have to get permission from the author or > from each other. Anyone else who had copies of the software we sold, > INCLUDING OUR CUSTOMERS, could also sell copies of it OR GIVE THEM AWAY. > Because none of us own any rights to the software. > I own the rights to my software. > Reality check: Not everything I've said is strictly true, because not all > of the software on Fish disks is public domain. Not much is, these days. If Fred Fish were to > patch a copyrighted-but-freely-distributable or shareware program, he > *would* be breaking the law (at least if he then put it on a fish disk). > If you rereleased Fish disks as Martin disks you'd probably have a problem > with the distribution terms on one of the copyrighted programs. Commodore > would have the same problem, though I'm sure they'd check it out first. > > One last thought: $30 for the equivalent of 360 disks of software sounds > quite reasonable to me. That's less than 1/10 the cost of those 360 disks. > I think the current price is something like $1000 Regards Alan > Kenneth Herron
sparks@corpane.UUCP (John Sparks) (08/07/90)
martin@IRO.UMontreal.CA (Daniel Martin) writes: > Just for fun, send me mail if you want a Fish Archive disc AND have a CD-ROM >hooked up to your amiga. Would you be interested in a yearly subscription >consisting of 1 disc per 3 months of new Fish archives, news from the >comp.sys.amiga.* and perhaps PD demo & third party for say 200$ a year? >I'm very interested to see how many answer I'll get. I'll summarize the >to the net. Ok, here is a vote from me and and a friend (two votes) that we would by CD-ROMS of FISH disks. Heck we could use one right now if there was a way. We are looking for a tape with fish disks on it right now, so we can put it on our hard drives for our BBS users to access. You couldn't help us with that could you? We have an Exabyte 8mm tape drive. While I have your attention, I could use some help. You said your company has several optical/floptical style drives hooke up to your amigas? Can you help me get one working on ours? Here is what we have: Amiga 2000 2091 Disk controller rev 4 modified The optical drive: RICOH read/write optical drive (300meg per side) The software that came with the 2091 controller wouldn't set up the drive correctly. We put in the correct information by hand but it didn't seem to save the information on the drive. When we rebooted, AmgigaDOS did not see the drive. Any help would be greatly appreciated. -- John Sparks |D.I.S.K. Public Access Unix System| Multi-User Games, Email sparks@corpane.UUCP |PH: (502) 968-DISK 24Hrs/2400BPS | Usenet, Chatting, =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-|7 line Multi-User system. | Downloads & more. A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of----Ogden Nash