Re: Nathan and the Apple Community.

[!smentzer@ecom.net (Steve Mentzer)]

>
>Nathan was perhaps a little two black and white about the issue.


Gee, there's an understatement. Nathan ritually persecuted anyone who got in 
his way, regardless of the person's guilt (or lack thereof).


>There are "hundreds of classic games" for the 8-bit A2s that
>no one cares about, but there are also dozens of still marketed
>A2 and IIGS software that people do.  These are still viable and
>regularly sell significant copies.  This is how places like Seven
>Hills manage to stay in business.  These still "living" software
>should not be pirated.  


And you know what, NO ONE ON THIS NEWSGROUP AGREES THAT IT IS OK TO PIRATE 
SOFTWARE THAT IS STILL BEING SOLD THROUGH A VIABLE COMMERCIAL ENTITY. GARAGE 
SALES DO NOT COUNT. 

Read that over and over until you understand that no one here wants to kill any 
places that are currently selling A2 products. Simple.


>
>It goes a little beyond that...Asimov's policy of "pirate first, ask
>questions later" is a little obtuse.  Perhaps it would be best to
>ask first.  People tend to get upset when the A2's remaining
>prized commercial software, like Proterm 3.1 or AppleWorks 5.1,
>are put on the site.  Since these publishers are so clearly
>available for contact, why not ask before touching?  When
>something like PT3.1 is pirated this way, it makes people who
>will write new things to for the GS stop.  


And you know what? PT3.1 and AW5.1 were removed when the copyright holder let 
the site admin know that the files should not be there. Yes, since it was 
common knowledge that the distributors and copyright holders still existed, the 
files should have NEVER been there in the first place. 

But your policy of "track down the most-likely-non-existant-company and 
make-sure-they-remember-the-apple2-software-they-sold and 
try-to-explain-to-some-legal-department-what-an-apple2-is, and then ask them to 
give away something for free" would propably be an extremely time consuming 
process. And most likely your answer would be NO.

It would go like this.

1 - hmmm.. software.. JoeSixpack software distributed it.
2 - hmmm... track down the company via the phone.
3 - hmmm.... no longer in existance (after 10 calls to information and a ton of 
web queries).
4 - hmmm... who bought them? no-one?
5 - shit. outta luck?
6 - send snail mail to last known address
(two weeks later)
7 - address unknown. outta luck?
8 - ask around on the newsgroups
(flames wars over, wait one week)
9 - go to step #1. Piracy is wrong.

Hunting down companies who propably don't exist is not a viable alternative. 
If it is viable, then you can go do it. In the mean time I am gonna play bard's 
tale



>>Helping is good, converting all the .shk files to .dsk is NOT.  Do
>you know how much more difficult it would be to download software
>for real Apple IIs?  Real A2 will always come first.  Emulators
>second.



why? give me one good reason why...


>
>Wrong.  Comp.sys.apple2 is mainly for real A2 users.


wrong. comp.sys.apple2 is for anyone, regardless of what computer type you 
have. This is no discrimination here. We are here to be helpful to everyone.

And for the record, CSA2 is *very* elitist group of folks. We need to be more 
open.

>XGS does not cut it for me.  It can't do the things my real GS can
>do.  If I were a IIe user, then maybe an emulator would cut it...
>

XGS is a pile of shit (I will agree with you just once). I know,I have been 
working on a rewrite for some time. 

smentzer@ecom.net