Re: Piracy of magazine-based routines?

[bwells@iag.net (Brian Wells)]

In article <53ul1q$57n@news.emi.com>, Edhel Iaur <drsmooth@relex.com> wrote:
>How immoral would it be to make public, programs that use routines
>from _A+_, _Nibble_, _Inside the Apple //e_, and (1 or 2 from)
>_SoftDisk_?  I'd also like to hear similar opinions about One-Liners
>from _Nibble_, and a VERY modified version of AE's AUTOCOPY that
>converts file types.

Most often, these routines were included in the magazines for use in your
programs. That's why _Nibble_ included the source code - so people could
learn programming techniques and routines that would be useful in their
efforts. So it's OK to include them in your code. It would be good to
credit the source, if possible. I know the authors of EGO's MiscLib and
SDGS's GSLib libraries want to be credited for use of their routines.

I wouldn't, however, take a program from a magazine or disk, modify it,
and distribute it. No matter how much you modify it, you can't make it
become an orignial product. Making a _similar_ product is OK, though. Just
be sure to do it better than they did :)

Distributing copies of the individual routines without permission from the
authors would also be a Bad Thing. For example, I would post the two
One-Liners I wrote that were published in _Nibble_, but they are the
property of MindCraft Publishing Corp, not me. I will tell you what issues
to look in, though: May '89 and March '90. :)

BTW, The one-liner in the May 1989 issue has some GS-specific opcodes in
it that will cause weird things to happen on the other Apple IIs. Here's
the fix, if anyone cares:

 300:A9 6A 85 06 A9 03 85 07
 308:EA

Funny that _Nibble_ missed that bug! :)

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