Reflections on the loss of the Official CSA2 FAQs

[cturley2@aol.com (Cturley2)]

Today I celebrated (or was that celebated :) my 23rd  wedding
anniversary. After a nice trip to the founding Apple II friends home
with another Apple II icon (no names mentioned) of equal first name
and status for a reunion of the two as it were, to give myself an 
anniversary gift, after sharing a nice bottle of Chaucer's Honey Mead I
returned home to read my email for today. In several of many emails
I read today, I was asked by friends to pay a visit to Nathan Mates 
website to see what he'd done to it.  So, I payed a visit and here's 
what I found...which I've reformatted in 69 col. text to honor
Nathan Mates which I've quoted below for the 'Official CSA2 FAQs.
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"This page permanently deleted

It is with great regret that I must announce that I feel that the
Apple II community has been turned into a wasteland by pirates,
thieves and liars. Further, a community that refuses to stand up to
these scum is participating in their nonsense-- especially when they
get suckered into believing that politeness is more important than
the truth.

The Apple II community doesn't give a shit about the constant
piracy, thievery, and hate of developers. And what's worse is that
more people throw a fit that I just used a 4 letter word instead of
being angry at the pirates that are truly killing the Apple II's
future.

I have invested many thousands of hours in Apple II creations, from
programming to maintaining the best and most correct set of Apple II
resources. Thanks to the jerks, this work has been constantly
maligned, stolen, insulted and I now count that investment of time
as a waste. The Apple II community has been given up on years ago by
people with more common sense-- and now it is my turn to join them
by turning my back on the "community," shaking the dust off my feet
at them and moving on.

The pirates may be able to steal various works. But, the creator has
the true power that they never can match-- the power to also
destroy. To this end, I have low-leveled all HD partitions and
backups on my machines. There will not be another GUPP update from
me, no Twilight II 2.0. Many other projects in various stages of
development-- previously unannounced due to my not wanting to
promote vaporware-- will likewise never appear on the Apple II. All
files used to create this web site have been similarly overwritten;
I have *none* of those files in my posession anymore-- and they
won't be coming back. And from my opinion, that's a good thing, as I
won't have to put up with the constant barrage of lies and
unappreciative users.

As long as the Apple II community is too idiotic to tell the
difference between the truth and lies couched in politeness, to tell
the difference between supporting pirates and developers, to tell
the difference between meaningless talk and actually creating, it
will be cursed to have more and more top developers leave. Less and
less will be created until the platform lies in obscurity, only the
domain of a few backbiting thieves who'll never create anything new
again.

Special mentions of thieves, liars, and crooks who have tried their
best to push away developers: Charles Turley (piracy and lies), Jeff
Hurlburt (aka Rubywand and SiFan-- more lies and outright hate of
developers, as the Wolf3D incident proved), Karl Asha (running a
pirate site), Patrick Kane (same), Steve Mentzer (posting many
pirated materials, then claiming for years to not have done so). The
blame for lack of Apple II development lies firmly at their feet,
but nobody seems to have cared.

And from me to the Apple II community: goodbye and good riddance.
You asked for developers to shun you, and they're too happy to
oblige. Don't bother contacting me; filters have been put in place
to automatically toast such messages.

Nathan Mates

7/14/98" 

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To which I simply reply: Thanks Nathan. What a perfectly lovely
anniversary gift and Christian thing to do!  If you ever want to
come back with your Apple II offerings, give me a buzz.  I've done 
it enough and certainly know how.

Peace, Love & Best Wishes in all the GOOD things you do.
Tom

To Brutal Deluxe I wish you ALL a 'Very Happy Bastille Day'.

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Rev. Charles T. Turley

"To you has been given the secret of the Kingdom of the Gods and Goddesses, but
for
those outside, everything orbits in parabolas"  Euclid

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