kpk@gitpyr.UUCP (Kevin P. Kleinfelter) (08/01/85)
I teach computer science at a small technical college. We have an IBM-PC lab with about 50 PC's. Recently, school lawyers have become PARANOID about lawsuits. It seems that companies have been loosing lawsuits regarding piracy if they do not actively prevent piracy by their employees. Simply having a policy against piracy is not enough -- the courts seem to feel that the company is responsible for enforcement of copyright laws. The lab presently has only one piece of software available for student use: PC-DOS with ALL utilities removed except for a modified version of FORMAT (modified to prevent creation of a system disk). This forces students to buy their own text-editors, compilers, etc. Does anyone have a solution to this idiocy?
nather@utastro.UUCP (Ed Nather) (08/02/85)
> I teach computer science at a small technical college. We have an IBM-PC > lab with about 50 PC's. Recently, school lawyers have become PARANOID about > (...) > Does anyone have a solution to this idiocy? It's not a complete solution, but "Freeware" and public-domain software programs are available which cover of *lot* of territory. An excellent text editor called PC-Write is widely available; the author requests $75 to "register" the editor, then goes on to suggest a school might want to register just one copy and distribute the editor to students, and buy a printed copy of the manual for each student. The manual cost is quite nominal, and it is very well written, and includes an extensive tutorial as well as reference material. A extensive amount of useful software has been distributed over Usenet, in source code form, including MS-DOS Kermit, which is both a file transfer utility and a first-rate terminal emulator; it has server mode so students can get into computer networking via serial ports and wires with little or no extra effort. PC-Talk III is the original "Freeware" product, uses the Xmodem protocol, and can be used to call up local bulletin boards which stock software in the public domain. I'd guess a single "class project" to explore, download and test such software would net more than you could use, and teach a lot as well. The idea of "site licensing" -- particularly to schools -- is becoming popular, and any software house who sees no advantage in having a lot of students turned out who know *their* compiler won't last too long against those who do. I haven't explored this avenue much, since the other approaches have been so successful for us, but I expect to will fill in the gaps. Disclaimer: These opinions are my own, and would doubtless be disowned by any spokesman for the University of Texas. -- Ed Nather Astronomy Dept, U of Texas @ Austin {allegra,ihnp4}!{noao,ut-sally}!utastro!nather nather%utastro.UTEXAS@ut-sally.ARPA
henry@rochester.UUCP (08/06/85)
From: Henry Kautz <henry> On the subject of school software: One of the best freeware products for educational institutions is CHASM, a macro-assembler for the PC from Dave Whitman. CHASM comes in two versions: a very simple BASIC version, and a super-duper compiled Pascal version. The first is available for free (just send Dave a blank disk), and may be freely passed around. You can get the better version for $30. For educational organizations, there's a special discount -- make as many copies as you want, for $10 each. (This is all based on you, the user's, honesty; none of the software is copy-protected.) CHASM comes with a very good manual explaining assembly language and programming the 8080, and explains how to interface assembly routines to Turbo Pascal. Write Dave at -- Dave Whitman 136 Wellington Terrace Lansdale, PA 19446