Re: Apple II Sound.. sponsor the project!

[Scott.Alfter@skunkworks.genesplicer.org (Scott Alfter)]

In article <3470392@f10.n209.z1>,
Philip Lamb  <p.lamb@student.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
>
>Scott.Alfter@skunkworks.genesplicer.org (Scott Alfter) writes:
>> Hmm...as the individual who started this whole concept of digital audio on
>> 8-bit Apple IIs, I'm a bit troubled that you've taken someone's
>> freely-available source code and decided to sell a derivative work as
>> shareware.
>
>A couple of important points here. While Michael Mahon's source code was the
>basis for IISound, I largely rewrote it to allow it to run over auxiliary
>memory, which is quite a sibstantial change.

Was it?  When I fixed SoftDAC to use auxiliary memory, all that was required
was a small loader to clone the playback code into page 3 of all available
auxiliary-memory banks and some code to change the RTS at the end of the
normal routine into short routines to twiddle memory settings (bank select,
aux/main, etc.)  I doubt that the routines with which you started required
much more modification than that, unless you're always running from main
memory instead of auxiliary memory (reading auxiliary memory from main
memory is a royal PITA).  More code to load sound data into auxiliary memory
was also needed, but that was fairly trivial code (blast some data into main
memory from disk, pack the upper nibbles of two bytes into a single byte,
and blast that into auxiliary memory).

> And also, while it is essential to
>the program, it is only a 100th of the total code. I have spent probably a
>couple of hundred hours developing the sound loader, the user interface, the
>multiple sound handler, without which the playback code would be useless
except
>to other machine language programmers.

The loader is trivial to implement.  Likewise, dealing with multiple sound
formats is trivial; personally, I didn't think it was worth the bother to
implement (let the file header play for a few milliseconds before going into
the actual data; nobody's going to notice it anyway).  User-interface coding
is something I never bothered with because it's so tedious (that's why
SoftDAC only works from a shell), so you might have a small point here.  A
user interface by itself does nothing, though, so it would be hard to
justify the value of a program (IMO) on user interface alone. 

>If you think that it was acceptable and usable in that form, I think you are
>wrong. I doubt you have run IISound, but I suggest you do, and THEN say that
>you don't think my work is worth something. 

I was thinking of pointing out that there are hundreds of software packages
infinitely more complex than yours (or mine, for that matter; Emacs and
Linux come to mind as examples) that are freely available, but that comment
might have been interpreted by some as sniping.  Personally, I don't think
it's useful to try to extract blood from a turnip.  

I don't write code to make money; I write code because either (1) it's fun
to get a computer to do something other than what it was intended to do, (2)
something nobody else had ever thought of doing, or (3) I have a job I need
to do and there's nothing else out there already that'll do the job.  When I
was working on it, each release of SoftDAC met those specifications.  I
regard programming as a hobby; I write stuff that I can use.  If I think
others can use it, I'll go ahead and spread it around so that other people
can try it and do with it as they see fit (use it, throw it out, feed it to
the fishes, or whatever).

I can't say that I've used your program (mainly because, now that I have a
IIGS, I have no further need for software-DAC technology).  I hope you don't
take this personally, but it is my view that 99.99% of the software on the
market today isn't worth anywhere near what is being asked for it.  Even
packages such as AppleWorks and ProTERM are somewhat overpriced, and they're
probably the most useful programs I have.

>In summary, what I am really charging for is the interface code, as
>that is what I will be working on, and I just cannot afford to work for the
>goodwishes of II users alone.

Why not?  I don't know what your motivations for Apple II code-crunching
are, so I won't make any comments on them.  Regardless of whatever
additional code you've written, though, you're still producing a derivative
work; that you would attempt to profit off of it is something I would find
objectionable if you had started with code that I had provided for free
(which is why SoftDAC is protected by GNU copyleft).  If I were Michael
Mahon (or if you had started with SoftDAC code), though, I'd be more than a
little peeved.  As things stand now, I'm still a bit annoyed, but more for
"philosophical" reasons than anything else.

  _/_   Scott Alfter @ 1:209/263 (Fidonet)               Linux--the choice of
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