Re: A New Hope.

[nightingale@comp2sys.net]

In these days of massive free downloading via Limewire, KaZaA, eDonkey,
eMule, BitTorrent etc, it's hard to imagine a day when stuff was not so
available for your favorite computer.

Dr. Tom used to sector edit stuff, breaking the protection and, often,
adding his name to the credits of software he edited, to make it look like
he contributed to the creation of the software. Much software was released
in this manner and, of course, legitimate programmers were outraged that
their, and others, material was being savaged and made available in such a
manner. It cost them future sales, and as a result, they no longer had
the incentive to improve their product nor wish to create new products
for the dwindling A2 market.

Quantum Cat (believed by some to be Richard Bennett, although he has
denied this) led the fight against Tom, along with Nathan Mates, another
brilliant programmer, who left the A2 world when his frustration with Tom
reached a head. Tom eventually moved on, as did most of the other players
and the newsgroup became civil again.  The uneasy calm gets rattled every
now and then, when those days are recalled.

Many commercial products have since been reclassified as freeware, many
manuals released to the internet for scanning etc. Tom did this in the
80s and 90s but before it was generally accepted and allowed. There are
those who call him a pioneer; there are those who call him a pirate.
Either way, in the timeline of the internet, it's ancient history. 

Before he left, Tom announced that he was leaving the group and that 
he had zipped up everything he had (over 45,000 files), and put a huge
594 megabyte file on his website. It remained there for a few days,
available for download. It's possible that that file contains source codes
for many programs, if anyone still has it today.


>   From: "Charlie" <charlieDOTd@verEYEzon.net>
>Although I was here in those days I never really understood what the
>fight was about...