dnelson@umbio.MIAMI.EDU (Dru Nelson) (11/18/88)
I have a friend whose name is Barry Nelson (no relation) and he writes
many nice programs for the coco's os9. He makes many of them PD or
doesn't release them but they appear in some commercial programs. One
program he made was D. It is a simple 40 byte program that was made
PD and publishable, YET (AND THIS MAKES ME ANGRY!) in December 1988,
Rainbow, Pg 81... IT IS ADVERTISED AS ONE OF THE GOLBERG UTILITIES
WITH NO MENTION OF WHO WROTE IT!
Another instance is Microcom's OS9 Level II BBS program. They use
programs called Uloadx and Dloadx. These were also written by Barry
("Doc"). NO Mention was made of his authoring nor did they notify
him. Many of these programs compare exactly byte for byte to the
programs he has made. These are just a few. I know a few people who
have published books for the coco and os9 know he has done some
programs that they use.
he didn't ask me to post this, I posted this. I just want people to
recognize his work. He gets depressed when he sees that some &**^%(@
has just published his software with his own name. His programs are
locked up now a lot, lot tighter now.
Just seeing that recognition is deserved. Thank you.
--
Dru Nelson UUCP: ....!uunet!gould!umbio!dnelson
Miami, Florida MCI: dnelson
Internet: dnelson%umbio@umigw.miami.edukoonce@brahms.berkeley.edu (tim koonce) (11/18/88)
In article <948@umbio.MIAMI.EDU> dnelson@umbio.MIAMI.EDU (Dru Nelson) writes: >I have a friend whose name is Barry Nelson (no relation) and he writes >many nice programs for the coco's os9. He makes many of them PD or >doesn't release them but they appear in some commercial programs. > >Just seeing that recognition is deserved. Thank you. > It's sad that such a thing could happen. A few suggestions, though: 1) Include careful documentation with programs released which features the name of the author. 2) Include the author's name, etc, as a constant string in the object. (A simple 'fcc "Author: Barry Nelson, <date>"' will do in Assembly.) 3) Include author's name in a usage message available through a -? option. 4) Be obnoxious and include the author's name in the output of the program. (If you're paranoid, you could even encrypt the string!) 5) Copyright and release as freeware, rather than PD. Note that copyrighting simply means putting 'Copyright <name> <year>' in a visible place (such as usage summary, documentation, in the object). 6) Put together groups of these utilities and market them! Several companies are happy to market groups of small utilities. If he's not interested in making money, market them for some token fee, like $10 for 10 utilities. These suggestions might help to insure that people become more aware of who actually writes the utilities. As a general rule, you want to include your name, etc, with the program somewhere, or you'll never get the recognition you deserve. One warning: I hope that you have good grounds for the accusation that someone is marketing code that your friend wrote. That's a pretty serious accusation. That utilities have the same name is not enough to mean they are the same. - Tim Koonce