Re: Asimov pirates AppleWorks 5, kills AppleWorks 5.2/6.0!

[spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

In article nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates) writes...

>Don't look to pirates to produce software-- all they can do is
>occasionally take something apart to disable part, rather than truly
>*creating* something new.

    That is not necessarily true. It may shock some people to know
that some of the most well respected programmers in the Apple II
world started off as software pirates (removal of copy protection,
adding "cracked by" title pages to boot screens and distribution
of commercial software to the public, via pirate BBSes). In later
years they moved on and wrote some very innovative software.

    Want some examples? Andy Nicholas (aka Soundwave) who went
on to write ShrinkIt and ShrinkIt-GS, not to mention System 6.0
and System 6.0.1. Jason Anderson (aka Joe Hack) and Steve Chiang
(aka Ferrari) of the East Coast Connection, who later went on to
write DreamGrafix, DreamVision and TimeLord. Then there is the
graphic-artist Matthew Crysdale (aka Dark Prophet) who drew many
priate cracked-by screens, but later went on to do the graphics
in games such Alien Mind, Task Force and Great Western Shootout.
I'm certain there are many dozen more examples of the same.

    I don't agree with piracy, but I found the above comment
kind of assuming in light of these facts. :) (I don't think
any lesser of Andy, Jason, Steve or Matthew because of their
past mind you, since their contributions in later years more
than made up for any damage they caused by piracy years ago).

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca