Re: piracy, Asimov, you, and me

[dmcclain@runet.edu (Dennis McClain-Furmanski)]

Will Baguhn (wbaguhn@nyx10.cs.du.edu) wrote:
: 
: Also, as an amendment to the "proposal of making Asimov legal", how
: about sending out a notice to copyright holders that Asimov would like
: to make their old software available to the public, and would that be ok?

That's the only way.

: And at the same time, include in the letter/email that if no response
: is heard in 2 months, we'll just assume that you don't care anymore
: and have it available.  It may be RUDE, it may be illegal on a technicality,
: but it's far more realistic.

It's not a technicality, it's a law. Unless rights are tranferred 
specifically and clearly, they are not transferred.

As to your comment about "if they [prior developers] cared, they'd be doing
something about it [infringements]..."

How do you know they are not or will not, and in what manner would you 
like to be notified? That's a rhetorical "you".

Seems to me a great deal of honor would be bestowed upon the person who 
actually contacted a copyright holder and obtained release. Should anyone 
actually do so, I would suggest asking them to make it sharware rather 
than PD -- the response might be more positive.

Tell you what. I'll follow up on my long postposed promise to contact 
Microsoft regarding TASC. I've alreadt converted it from DOS 3.2 to DOS 
3.3. It would need to be patched for ProDOS. Given the compiler itself to 
work with (it was used to compile itself) finding the necessary places to 
patch and making them shouldn't be beyond a few programmers still around.