info@acw.com (Scott Guthery) (04/20/91)
A couple notes on Gary Murphy's posting and the attached note by Al Paeth:
1) Only about 1/3 of what The Austin Code Works distributes is available via
FTP. Another 1/3 is copyright code by authors who do not want to be in the
software duplication and distribution business, who have contracted with us to
distribute their code, and to whom we pay a royalty for each copy sold. The
final 1/3 is commercial products which are also available from other mail
order distributors.
2) With respect to the code that is available via FTP it is useful to recall
that not everyone has an Internet FTP connection. The service we think of
ourselves as performing is making this code available to these people. It also
gives the code a wider distribution which many authors who distribute code via
FTP not only don't object to but actually appreciate. On all FTPable code we
cover reproduction, order-taking, and redistrbution costs. If we err, we err
on the side of being able to continue to provide this service.
3) On the issue of the SAO data, we contacted the Smithsonian as soon as we
heard of Al Paeth's concerns. Al never bothered to contact us directly but
rather immediately took his case to the net. The compilation of this data
was paid for by U.S. taxpayers, the SAO data belongs to them, and is freely
redistributable by U.S. citizens among others. We mistakenly included a
program by Al Paeth on early distributions because we didn't understand that
when he posted the data and his program to the net he intended that his
program remain proprietary. We have been in touch with Al about this and
apologized to him. We now only redistribute the data itself.
If anyone has any questions or comments about our operation, about what we do,
or about how we do it please feel free to contact me directly. We run an open
shop and are anxious to discuss any aspect of it with anybody. If we're doing
something that most people object to, we'll stop it, plain and simple.
Cheers, Scott
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