Re: Building An Apple ][ Software Archive

[Roy and/or Janet Miller <millers@inetnebr.com>]

atanasmarkov@my-deja.com wrote:

> and what about the games
> you talk about? can they sell them now? so why do their authors keep
> them away from public? that's why i am against such "privacy". yes, we
> must keep privacy, but for products that can still be sold.

Lately I've seen a number of game packages on the software shelves that are
"retreads" of 80s classic games for the Wintel platform. And there is the
answer to your questions. "Can they sell them now?" - Yes! Can they sell the
Apple II (only) versions? No, but even if the Wintel game is totally
different code, if it is a port, or an update of a classic game they (might)
need to keep the copyright on the original to protect the version that is
currently being sold. If your accounting package was first written on a TI
99/4a, but the current version is only sold on the Mac platform, and if you
released the TI version which then allows someone to totally ripoff your Mac
version because you released "AccountPro" to the public domain, well, you'd
be kicking yourself, and your lawyer for letting you do that. I suspect that
that is the case with many of the game packages that we would like to see
made freeware. I might be wrong on this (that has happened once or twice ;-)
but I don't know of any packages which are freeware on one platform and
still being sold on another. Does anyone know of such a case? AND where the
copyrights are held by the same people?

Roy


> we must
> respect authors. i am an author, too(i write accounting software for
> the PC), but should i keep my copyrights in 5 or even 10 years if i
> haven't written newer versions of the product, that will surely be very
> difficult to sell at all? i think i'll have to write new products then,
> but not try to sell the old one. so i think that software that's more
> than certain age old must be made PD. can we take any steps for doing
> that?
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.