jlg@lanl-a.UUCP (06/02/83)
I suppose a privateer I software would be someone who obtains (legally or illegally) some software and makes monor changes to it. This 'new' program can then be copyrighted and sold as a new product. The problem is that it is very difficult to prove that slightly altered software was not an original developement of the privateer. I suspect that much of the software available today is privateered public domain software.
johnl@ima.UUCP (06/04/83)
#R:lanl-a:-33600:ima:16900006:000:885
ima!johnl Jun 3 11:43:00 1983
A privateer historically was somebody given "letters of marque and
reprisal" by one government that allowed him to attack ships flying the
flag of some hostile government. The line between privateering and
privacy was always very thin. To the people on the ships that got looted
and burned, it sure didn't make much difference.
I hear that the USSR embassy in Washington has a huge IBM computer center
largely so that they can drop copies of the software in their diplomatic
pouches and send them off to run on knockoff 360s in Russia. (See the June
1978 issue of ACM Computing Surveys for more details of Russian computing.)
That sounds more like privateering to me. Wonder how their micros are
coming along. Haven't heard anything new since the reverse-engineered
8080.
John Levine, decvax!yale-co!jrl, ucbvax!cbosgd!ima!johnl,
{research|alice|allegra|floyd|amd70}!ima!johnl