Nathan Mates (was Re: OMG!)

["Sheldon Simms" <sheldon@interprice.com>]

Im Artikel <3AE70109.D7493314@inetnebr.com> schrieb "Roy and/or Janet
Miller" <millers@inetnebr.com>:

> That isn't true. Nathan Mates was a programmer/developer. He was driven
> off by the community, because, in his mind, the community tolerated
> pirates. So, you are wrong. Care to try a different tack?

Speaking of Nathan Mates. Yes he was a programmer/developer. I argued
in his favor many times in this newsgroup when he was saying that people
shouldn't be pirating such software titles as Merlin, ProSEL, Appleworks,
Hardpressed, etc. etc. when these program were all still being sold
(and sometimes still devloped). I argued against him when he railed
against the "pirating" of otherwise unavailable, mostly very old, software.

As far as I can tell, the vast majority of people who still have an
interest in the Apple II don't have any interest in pirating actively
developed or distributed programs. They have an interest in using
programs on their Apples, and when these programs are unavailable any
other way, they see nothing wrong (in any sense of the word) with
simply downloading the software from the net.

Nathan was basically a extremist in his opinions. To him, this
majority attitude was equivalent to robbing banks. I think he left when
he realized A) that hardly anyone agreed with him and B) that as more
and more software became unavailable by any means other than internet
sharing, his position became increasingly untenable (one could even
say ludicrous).

-- 
sheldon@semanticedge.com  "The term (denotation t) denotes the object denoted
                           by the object denoted by t." -- KIF