Re: Your favourite [Commodore] enemy - the Spectrum, the Atari, the CPC, the Apple 2, or the MSX???

["Kelli Halliburton" <kelli217@crosswinds.not>]

Larry Anderson wrote in news:comp.sys.cbm:

> Apple II - are they still out there?  That is the quietest group on
> the net; I know there are Apple-II groups, but whenever you look for
> user representation they don't show much in numbers.  :-/

Believe me, they're not quiet amongst themselves. There are quite a few
(well, two or three anyway) who enjoy regularly announcing themselves as
leaving the fold due to perceived slights, only to reappear a few months or
even mere weeks later.

Some problems they love arguing about are abandonware and other copyright
issues, especially given that one of the more prominent occasional members
of the community continually stands accused of stealing someone's work (then
currently still under active development) and claiming it as his own. The
accusation is backed by fairly strong evidence, but is of the nature of
hearsay. This accusation regularly rears its ugly head despite no legal
action ever (apparently) having been initiated by the accusers, much less
adjucated in a court of law. The accused is one of the most active people at
striving to have abandonware legally released for public redistribution, but
his efforts go unappreciated and even unbelieved when he secures a release.
There's also an anonymous poster, a fan of Schroedinger, who takes the most
absolutist position about abandonware and spews vile invective against
anyone who dares argue for a more pragmatic approach.

Did I mention the woman who has a lot to offer the community but has
incredibly strict quid pro quo based criteria for releasing her
contributions?

How about the guy who not only retreated from the community due to
intellectual property issues, but destroyed all of the careful compilation
and documentation projects that he himself had created, in a fit of pique?

No, the obsessive pro-CBM/anti-PC and fanatical "I must have a memory map
for a system that doesn't exist yet" behavior found in comp.sys.cbm has
nothing on the gems of comp.sys.apple2 -- which is why I haven't read the
latter newsgroup in three months (but am nonetheless crossposting this to
both newsgroups).

On the other hand, there are also people like Rubywand and David Empson, who
are extremely knowledgeable, and willing to share their knowledge with
anyone. They're kind of like Marko Makela and Jim Brain are to the CBM
newsgroups. There's always a bright spot somewhere.