johnston@oscar.ccm.udel.edu (12/01/90)
>In article <1990Nov29.193346.12451@ccad.uiowa.edu> emcguire@ccad.uiowa.edu >(Ed McGuire) writes: [A brief criticism of the HC 2.0 distribution policy -- I won't repeat it.] I had an interesting e-mail exchange with the author of the article that spawned this thread. Something about it got my dander up. Something important to me was being attacked, in a sense, and I spent more time fighting back than I might if my wallet had been stolen. I am not sure why, exactly. Although I have edited out all quotes of private correspondence, I point out up front that the some of the discussion below refers to the fact that I offered to make exact copies of the 5 HC 2.0 distribution disks that I obtained through the MIT Mac user's group. I apologize in advance if this offends anyone's sense of propriety and acknowledge that my offer was inappropriate. The gist of my original mail message was that one should try the package before criticizing it in an open forum. Just hit 'n' if you are not interested in reading a testimony to the HyperCard spirit; this message is too long for this forum. I apologize again. [Sigh: Disclaimer coming. I don't speak for anyone but myself.] We join this one-sided conversation in mid-stream. Picture me on my soapbox ... insert IMHO where appropriate ..... What *is* illegal is for me to announce to the world that you can get your HC 2.0 upgrades from Bill. The copy I got was distributed by Apple, and amounts to the last issue of HyperCard software that has the Apple copyright. .... Apple chooses to overlook postings that say "please help -- my copy of Multifinder 6.1b9 is trashed -- please e-mail". Now they have specifically told people not to do that with HyperCard, because somebody in Apple Legal thinks they need to know where the copies go. They are investing real money in HyperCard development, and probably will charge money for subsequent upgrades at some time in the future. They are in business to make money. In the process, they have done things that were far-sighted and elegant. I recall the first time I saw HyperCard .... I had access to beta versions of HyperCard during the pre-1.0-release stage and still use a photocopy of HyperTalk working draft version 4 as a reference when scripting. A guy who was beta-testing gave me a copy; two heads are better than one. My comments got passed along to Atkinson et al under his bug report and comments forms, I guess. That's the way HC 2.0 was developed as well. Many in the c.s.m.h readership were beta-testing; there were certainly no general proscriptions against copying HC 2.0bx during the period of time in which the team was relying on the net communities for feedback. Sorry if that offends your puritanical image of "legal distribution channels" but thats the way the software industry works, by and large. You have my permission to quote this verbatim to whomever you wish, and you are welcome to include ..... Bill Johnston; 38 Chambers St.; Newark, DE 19711; (302)368-1949 ..... in your posting. You'll rekindle the usual flamewar over the gray areas of software distribution and intellectual property, but nobody will dispute the basic points I've made. (Well, maybe not.) If it is of any interest to you, I happen to have gone out and purchased a copy of HC 1.0 on the very day it was officially released, or at least when the shipment hit Delaware. I was convinced from the beta version of the application that HC was the most significant contribution to personal computing that had ever been made, and I wanted the shrink-wrapped official version as a souvenir. Someday, I'd like to have Bill Atkinson autograph it for me. (And the HyperCard 2 team as well.) So I already paid my $49, and I look a bit quizzically at the whiners (I'm not referring to you) who keep complaining about HC 2.0 policies. The legal gobbledeygook surrounding the HyperCard 2 distribution has nothing to do with Claris wanting to fool people into spending money unnecessarily. Prior postings by Apple people did mention the user group distribution policy. Does Bush have to start every press conference by quoting the Constititution and every subsequent amendment ... The HC press releases were posted in response to queries about the contents of the Claris packages. This has been an ongoing hassle since Apple decided to move HyperCard to commercial status. A long battle was concluded with the decision to release HyperCard 2.0 to users groups as an Apple copyrighted program, followed by a shift to Claris and commercial status. This was a very complicated undertaking from a legal standpoint, an engineering standpoint, and from a marketing standpoint. Nobody pulled a fast one here to make a fast buck. Even after exhaustive beta testing there were still disagreements about what HyperCard should do -- how complicated it should be for new users -- how best to promote serious stackware development by commercial developers. How to do sound, what systems and CPU's to support, how to manage multiple user access to shared stacks, etc., etc. ?? HyperCard has become a serious program; your original posting said something to the effect that "I just want things to be the same as before". Well fine, then. Keep using 1.2.5. It is still an excellent application. [The author asked if he should apologize for being a new comp.sys.mac.hypercard subscriber.] Most emphatically not. Certainly not to me. I appreciate your 'apology' but don't really think it was necessary. I am just like you -- a HyperCard hobbyist and would-be evangelist. Sometimes it is appropriate to read for a while before posting a critical article, though. Particularly in one of the truly net.politically-correct groups like c.s.m.hypercard in which many of the members of the HyperCard development team have participated in a very open and honest way, repeatedly and patiently answering both advanced and new-user questions. Jumping right in and proclaiming yourself 'disgusted' is just a bit ugly in a situation like this. On any other platform, an application with the capabilities of HyperCard would cost $500, be copy-protected, and a miserable failure because the underlying ethic of HyperCard is based on user-customization and code-sharing, which the [bad guys] hate. If you call Claris, they will tell you how to get HyperCard, certainly. Maybe *god forbid* a salesperson answers the phone and is permitted under company policy to sell you a copy of the $49 upgrade (which gives you the entry level documentation) -- without pointing out that it is possible to obtain an undocumented, unsupported, and potentially confusing set of stacks from BMUG. Is this a crime? That Claris prefers to distribute upgrades with documentation so that people can use the product? This article was not written for your benefit, entirely. I prefer to comment on USENET articles by e-mail, to avoid wasting bandwidth. Should the mini-flamewar you've spawned continue, I will post an edited version of this article, omitting personal references. I give you my permission to take the initiative and post yourself -- you may use any of the ideas I have presented, provided that you attribute it appropriately and include enough context to fairly represent my position. The reason that I suggest this is that, in my opinion, articles such as yours do a dis-service to HyperCard in particular, and the larger cause of free information exchange that is integral to the HyperCard ethic. I think that you must understand that on some level, as you point out that you 'praise HC to any body who will listen'. My guess, and it's only a guess, is that you admire many of the same aspects of HC that the rest of us do. The flamers, and you've pointed out correctly that you are not the only one, add fuel to the arguments of people at Apple that HyperCard development expenses amount to casting pearls before swine. The HyperCard team fought valiantly to make their upgrade as elegant as possible -- solicited and got feedback from users regarding the distribution policy -- and successfully won the right to distribute the HyperCard 2 binary to users groups under the Apple copyright and the conditions I've mentioned above. This issue means much more to me than a simple USENET flame-war. Having followed HyperCard from its infancy, and knowing full well that the IBMs and Microsofts of the world will never give us such a product -- I fight for it any way I can. Apple is a big company and is currently successful. But it's continued success, and ability to do great and elegant things like HyperCard is hardly assured by the fact that I alone tout it. The computer giants and info-tyrants of the world DON'T LIKE HYPERCARD. What's *wrong* with HyperCard? The stackware can't be easily copy-protected. Users can take apart code and modify it to their liking. It's hard to protect trade secrets in a HyperCard stack -- anybody can view the code. It's difficult to 'standardize' a HyperCard stack. The MIS department can't 'control' it. Users share insights and tips, and are so used to sharing what they know that if somebody in Iowa wants to know how to get HyperCard they're are liable to get an offer of assistance from someone willing to bypass the 'official' users group distribution channels. The dreadfulness and immorality of the HyperCard community is such that Apple fails to stamp out these 'dangerous' trends. HyperCard is worth $49. It is worth $199. It was *already* worth that much before HC 2.0. I bought my copy of HyperCard 1.0 because I wanted to have a souvenir manual that someday I hope to have autographed by the members of the development team. I got my current copy of HC 2.0 by copying it from someone who got his through an authorized users group. Gosh, I am both a criminal and a sap! Somebody stop me before I order the Claris upgrade anyway because it's probably worth the money! Bill Johnston; 38 Chambers St.; Newark, DE 19711; (302)368-1949 johnston@oscar.ccm.udel.edu