reid@glacier.ARPA (Brian Reid) (01/17/86)
Many of you may have noticed the new mod.recipes newsgroup, which I set up
in November 1985 for the creation of a "USENET cookbook" consisting of
recipes contributed by people all around the net. It got off to a rocky
start because of distribution difficulties and "features" of the news
software, but I think that the mechanism is now under control. About 40
recipes have gone out; new recipes go out at the rate of 4 per week, and
there is some simple software distributed with them (which I wrote) that
allows a fairly primitive cookbook to be assembled; its pages look very much
like man pages from the Unix Programmer's Manual.
Naturally the wide distribution of mod.recipes gives the entire set of
recipes and the software to anyone and everyone who wants it. I wouldn't
have it any other way. Long live Radio Free Usenet.
I've been having a series of conversations with a person at a company near
here. He is some kind of official in some Unix User's organization. I've
never been to any of those meetings, and I don't really understand the
difference (if there is a difference) between Usenix and /usr/group and
anything else.
Anyhow, this gentleman has taken the full collection of recipes and the
software, modified the format somewhat, removed the word USENET from it
(changing the title from "USENET Cookbook" to "Unix Cook's Manual") and is
planning on selling it to raise money for that user's organization, which I
assume is a nonprofit group.
I am at the same time thrilled by this and very dismayed by it, and I'd like
to ask this collection of USENET lovers whether or not there is supposed to
be any kind of "netiquette" for situations like this. On the one hand the
very definition of "free and public" is that everybody who wants it can have
it to do whatever he wants with it; on the other hand, removing the name
"USENET" from it, and commercializing it (even to benefit a nonprofit
organization) flies against the two reasons why I worked so hard to set it
up in the first place, namely that I love USENET and I love free public
non-commercial things.
As nearly as I can tell from the mail I've exchanged with him, he's a
perfectly reasonable, perfectly fine fellow. He isn't trying to make a buck
for himself; he's trying to raise money for the user's organization. Neither
he nor I have any prior experience at the etiquette issues here; my guess is
that he will be very surprised to hear that I am at all unhappy with what he
is doing, even as I was very surprised to hear that he was taking it so far
out of USENET that people might not even know where it had come from,
mailing their contributions to him instead of posting them. Quoting:
"At XXXXX I showed my current Unix Cook's Manual to a bunch
of people, all of whom were excited. Many will contribute
(of course I'll forward to you when they do) and if
contributions are half as interesting as yours the book
will be great. XXXXX people also seemed willing to foot
the bill to get the 1st edition published for sale at YYYYY."
How should I react? How should the net react? Is this an issue or a
non-issue? If it is a non-issue why am I so dismayed by it?
--
Brian Reid decwrl!glacier!reid
Stanford reid@SU-Glacier.ARPAgrr@unirot.UUCP (George Robbins) (01/18/86)
In article <3273@glacier.ARPA> reid@glacier.ARPA (Brian Reid) writes: > >I've been having a series of conversations with a person at a company near >here. He is some kind of official in some Unix User's organization. I've >never been to any of those meetings, and I don't really understand the >difference (if there is a difference) between Usenix and /usr/group and >anything else. > >Anyhow, this gentleman has taken the full collection of recipes and the >software, modified the format somewhat, removed the word USENET from it >(changing the title from "USENET Cookbook" to "Unix Cook's Manual") and is >planning on selling it to raise money for that user's organization, which I >assume is a nonprofit group. > >How should I react? How should the net react? Is this an issue or a >non-issue? If it is a non-issue why am I so dismayed by it? >-- > Brian Reid decwrl!glacier!reid > Stanford reid@SU-Glacier.ARPA I would tell him he's being an rot1(bttipmf). There is no excuse for not giving full credit to the sources of the material, and it is at best in poor taste to take other persons work and repackage it with minimal editing, for monetary gain. I know there are people who repackage public domain software, but most of them put some effort into cleaning things up and makeing the software available to a spectrum of users which was part of the reason the stuff was entered into the public domain in the first place. If you cannot persuade him to title the booklet and give apprpriate credit, in a fashion that you feel is in tune with intersts of the people who submitted the material to the newsgroup, you should try to discuss it with the this users groups other officers, since it puts the whole group in a tawdry light. In the longer run, since it is a moderated group, you should have your software insert a ugly little legal notice saying that the material cannot be copied for commercial purposes, nor have the origen information removed. This is of course legally vacuous, but it would at least tell clever people that they are being bad guys... I guess posting a policy statement monthly would probably be adequate and less offensive than appending a notice to every submission. -- George Robbins uucp: ...!ihnp4!tapa!grr P.O. Box 177 ...!caip!unirot!grr Lincoln U, PA 19352 [Any ideas herein are not responsible for themselves!]
jeff@rtech.UUCP (Jeff Lichtman) (01/19/86)
> > Anyhow, this gentleman has taken the full collection of recipes and the > software, modified the format somewhat, removed the word USENET from it > (changing the title from "USENET Cookbook" to "Unix Cook's Manual") and is > planning on selling it to raise money for that user's organization, which I > assume is a nonprofit group. > > I am at the same time thrilled by this and very dismayed by it, and I'd like > to ask this collection of USENET lovers whether or not there is supposed to > be any kind of "netiquette" for situations like this. > > How should I react? How should the net react? Is this an issue or a > non-issue? If it is a non-issue why am I so dismayed by it? > -- > Brian Reid decwrl!glacier!reid It bugs me, too. To me, mod.recipes is like a club. Those of us who contribute recipes do it out of generosity and to keep the newsgroup going. Now we find that one of the members is planning to take our contributions and sell them. There's nothing legally improper about this, since the posted recipes are in the public domain. It just seems to go against the spirit of the group. I don't think I would have minded so much had we been asked. If the person in question had sent mail to Brian Reid (he's the moderator of net.recipes and is much too modest) asking him to conduct a poll, I would guess that the mod.recipes readers would have consented. Another thing that bugs me is that the name "USENET" has been taken off of the cookbook. It makes me wonder whether that's the only thing that's been removed. Are the names of the contributors still there? How about an explanation of where the recipes come from and how they're collected? Does Brian Reid get any credit? Brian relayed a message in which the person in question said that he would be getting contributions from others, and putting them in the cookbook. Is that his version or ours? If they're his, that's fine with me. If he plans to post them to mod.recipes, I hope he tries them out before doing so. I look at mod.recipes as a collection of the favorites of the USENET "club", and am not too thrilled at the "club" being invaded by people who don't even know what USENET is. This may sound selfish to you, but think of it this way: suppose your church, or frat, or club, decided to put together a cookbook of the members' favorite recipes, and one of the members solicited entries from all sorts of strangers and wanted to put them in the book. How would you feel? -- Jeff Lichtman at rtech (Relational Technology, Inc.) "Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent..." {amdahl, sun}!rtech!jeff {ucbvax, decvax}!mtxinu!rtech!jeff
andrews@ubc-cs.UUCP (Jamie Andrews) (01/21/86)
The trouble with [n]etiquette is that it's just an informal way of doing
things that everyone is supposed to agree upon. If someone decides to break
the informal rules to their own advantage (or that of their organization)
there's not much one can do about it.
If you want to keep the mod.recipes recipes from being published without
acknowledgement, the only way to do that is to put a copyright notice on each
one, viz.
Copyright (c) <year> <copyrighter>
e.g. Copyright (c) 1986 Jamie Andrews
...but in the absence of such a notice, the material is public-domain: anyone
can make money off of reprinting them (unless the person contemplating it bows
to netiquette). I suggest that if it is a real problem, the moderator should
make some agreement with the recipe writers that they all include a copyright
notice in their postings, or reproduce the original notice if it's not an
original recipe.
--Jamie.
...!ihnp4!alberta!ubc-vision!ubc-cs!andrews
"All these memories will fade with time, like tears in rain"ron@brl-smoke.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>) (01/21/86)
A non-philosophical issue that comes up anytime someone mentions one of these public release of USENET traffic is that this chap is likely to run into some problems if someones homedone USENET recipe is actually copyright information from some existing cookbook. -Ron