emv@ox.com (Ed Vielmetti) (05/16/91)
In article <VOSS.91May15222608@laslo.cs.uiuc.edu> voss@cs.uiuc.edu (Bill Voss) writes:
They have already drawn the line "please sign our disclaimer."
If SUG wants someone to sign a legal document, the least they
can do is give them a gratis (or maybe incremental cost $2) copy.
If a package has appeared on the SUG CD-ROM, is it safe to assume that
it could appear on other compilation CD-ROMs which are distributed
under the same conditions?
If a package appears on the tapes that UUNET sells (dumps of their
anonymous FTP spool), is it safe to assume that it could be included
on the SUG CD-ROM with no further hassle?
The SUG CD-ROM (as far as I can tell) has some value added -- you can
be reasonably sure that the packages on it are going to be more or
less identical to what the author of the package intended, and they
are going to work under SunOS. That migth be worth the $2xx they are
asking for it, I don't know.
I could imagine a person cutting a CD-ROM a month, one which would
contain all of the possibly interesting sources from anywhere on the
net that were announced or mentioned in the last month. No fancy
editing or legal disclaimers beyond the restrictions in the packages
(i.e. if they say you can't redistribute, you don't); nothing
different from what you would have gotten if you had FTP'd it
yourself. How many of these do you have to sell every month to recoup
the investment in disk (to store the data) and cutting the CD ROM
master? What's the market look like for a "source of the month club",
where $xxx up front gets you the next x issues?
Inquring minds want to know. (I want to know.)
--
Edward Vielmetti, vice president for research, MSEN Inc. emv@msen.com
"With all of the attention and publicity focused on gigabit networks,
not much notice has been given to small and largely unfunded research
efforts which are studying innovative approaches for dealing with
technical issues within the constraints of economic science."
RFC 1216