(whistle!) Time-Out!

[smentzer@ecom.net (Steven W. Mentzer)]

There is a ton of discussion surrounding the issue of piracy and what it did to 
the A2 software development market.

One of the recurring things I keep hearing is "uploading a beta of a commercial 
product is wrong, and it will kill any chance of release".

YES YES YES! You are right. It is wrong. Releasing a beta of a piece of 
software in development is a slap in the face of every dedicated A2 developer.

*** However ***

There *is* a difference between pirating a piece of commercially available or 
in-development software and downloading a piece of 10 year old 
no-longer-sold-or-supported software from asimov.

That is the basis of all the piracy discussions on this newsgroup over the 
last 2 years, and we shouldn't lose sight of that.

99% of all users on CSA2 do NOT advocate the piracy of commercially available 
software. 

1% of all users on CSA2 do not give a shit, and will download anything they 
can. This will *never* change, no matter how hard nathan rants. This is 
something about the software market you cannot change. It exists in every 
software market.

Nathan had a unique ability to polarize an issue, and make people who use 
asimov look like the people who are working overtime to pirate software such as 
proterm, AWGS, SoundSmith. That was never the case. There are titles on asimov 
that you just cant get anymore from anyone (short of a garage sale), and there 
was nothing wrong with downloading them. After all, no-one was getting hurt, 
right? 

The truth is that not every person who used asimov was a pirate. In the legal 
sense, yes, they were. But in the "rational" sense, no they weren't.

But I dont know a single person who would think that downloading from asimov 
and downloading SoundSmith was the ok just the same. There is a difference, 
regardless of your view on piracy.

The bottom line:

Asimov (when not holding commercial software) is a software repository that 
*helps* the remaining A2 community. Downloading "Robotron 2084" from there may 
be illegal in the *strictest* sense of the law, but if you are realistic, you 
will see that it really isn't all that bad.

Distributing COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE software is *bad* *bad* *bad*. Case closed.

These are two completely seperate issues, and most people in CSA2 believe the 
above to be true. 

So, dont blame the demise of the A2 software development efforts on a few bad 
apples (sorry for the pun). There were a ton of GOOD folks around here that 
knew what the difference was, and would have bought the software. 

If you ask me, it was nathan's cheerleading against CSA2 that forced many of 
the A2 programmers to develop a bad taste in their mouth. The truth is that 
most of us were good folks. But nathan screamed enough, and they all went away.  
They thought that our support for asimov meant that we wouldn't buy their 
software. That is a shame, and we have nathan to blame for it.

Like I have always said. For all the good nathan did for CSA2, and the A2 
community in general, he did more damage. It is too bad the developers sided 
with him. 

So, lets just drop it. If the developers side with nathan, they are wrong too. 
There were a lot of GOOD people around here, and it is too bad that 1% of the 
CSA2 community could ruin the chance for 99% of the people to get new software.

It's a shame...

smentzer@ecom.net