matthews@batcomputer.UUCP (06/04/87)
I have just been informed that Disk Ranger, which I have distributed as
freeware, is in fact a commercial program published by Mainstay.
Please help me publicize the existence of this illegal version. I very much
want to minimize the number of other people who will be humiliated as I have
been.
Because of my mistake, the illegal version was archived in the Info-Mac
directory about a week ago, as UTILITY-DISK-RANGER-21.HQX. Its "About..."
dialog box reads:
FREEWARE
This is a disk cataloging/label printing
program. If you like it, please give it to
all of your friends!
Disk Ranger is a very fine program, worth every bit of the asking price.
I hope people will not let the fact that it was associated with this criminal
act cause them to turn away from it as if it were somehow tainted. That
would be yet another injustice to the innocent author and publisher. My
sincerest apologies to them. To those who may have propagated my mistake
in the honest belief that Disk Ranger was public-domain, all of the blame
for your actions is mine.
- Dave Matthews
matthews@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu
matthews@crnlthry.bitnetmatthews@batcomputer.UUCP (06/05/87)
> From u-cdmorr%ug@cs.utah.edu Thu Jun 4 21:10:00 1987 > From: u-cdmorr%ug@cs.utah.edu (Cliff Morrison) > To: matthews@tcgould.TN.CORNELL.EDU > Subject: Disk Ranger > > It is my opinion that you are being a little hard on yourself. > Looking at the current version number and features, I find it very likely > that this program was offered as freeware before Mainstay bought the rights. > If this is not the case and it was "diddled" with, I would like to hear. > ... > Maybe you could post to the net and we all could be enlightened. I'm sure > more people were confused than convinced by your article. I'm sorry, once again. I hadn't thought about needing to present the evidence. Exhibit A is a phone call I made to Tom Nalevanko, president of Mainstay. He was gracious and philosophical, but he laid to rest my faint hope that it wasn't true. His philosophy was even sadder to hear: because of this kind of problem, Mainstay is getting out of the business of publishing small, inexpensive utilities. They find that many users simply refuse to believe that software in this category can cost money, their product TurboDownload being another case in point. Exhibit B is this entry in the current version (dated 4-16-87) of <INFO-MAC>SOFTWARE-VERSIONLIST.TXT: PROGRAM NAME VERSION TYPE PUBLISHER Disk Ranger 2.1 c Mainstay Granted, the current version of Disk Ranger is actually 3.0, but the illegal copy's version number was given as 2.1. Had I taken the trouble to consult the VersionList, none of this would have happened. I hope everybody sees the morals of the story as clearly as I do. 1) Why not check the catalog of your user group's software collection against the VersionList? 2) Why not help support the VersionList, maintained as public service by the Princeton Mac User Group, by submitting to them any information about new versions or new software you run across? - Dave Matthews matthews@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu matthews@crnlthry.bitnet