Re: vogons vs turlettes

["Arkain" <rwking@no.usa.spam.net>]

Quantum_Cat,

    Your responses to Bob were reasonable and surprisingly quite civil given
you posting record. Let me see if I can create a scenario that fit's the
problem Bob is trying to describe. Note that although this scenario isn't
specific to the A2 community, similar problems occur surrounding the
"abandonware".

You already know that in the PC industry there are devices marked "Windows
Only" which are designed in such a way that the necessary components to make
it work generically exist as software with which the holding company will
only support Window. Many people would like to see these modems come with
Linux drivers but the manufacturers refuse. This leaves the Linux user w/ a
problem.

Barring the options of a)buying a new modem (lack of funds) and b)moving
back to Windows(do I even need to explain?) these are the only remaining
options:

1) Reverse engineer the Windows driver -
    Lack of time and skill as well as copyright laws interfere with this
option.

2) Coerce the company into releasing programming specs for the WinModem -
    Yeah, right. WinModem ROM code specs are a closely guarded secret in
these companies. Even if you did manage to garner the specs, you'd have to
sign an NDA which means you can't distribute the driver you wrote, or you'd
have to pay for it (no money, remember?).

To make this relevant to the A2 abandonware condition, let's say that a
commercial WinModem driver was created by the company for Linux, but the
company a) doesn't support or sell the driver, b) the driver exists on their
ftp site, but the downloaded copyright license states that the software
license is incompatible with GPL and therefore cannot be used in conjunction
with GPL code. Since a Linux kernel is GPL, you cannot use the driver you
downloaded. Since you have the source code, you cannot make a "clean-room"
driver since you've seen the code.

You're basically left without a modem in Linux. There is no way around this.

The A2 corollary is in that there does exist A2 software that has a "no
resale" clause in it meaning that it is illegal to sell the software to a
second party. Likewise it is illegal to be in posession of second-hand
software. With this kind of condition in a commercial package that is no
longer being sold or supported, then there is no legal means of attaining
such software. Likewise, if this software provides some important function
that is highly difficult to replicate, and there is no other software
packages that can achieve the same desired results, then you're basically
stuck.

Fortunately, this doesn't happen in the A2 community very often, but it does
happen. So how do you work around this?

BTW: What do you do with abandonware when the company has collapsed and the
authors have all died?

Arkain