Re: Issues as of late

[Kelly Hall <khall@acm.org>]

MechCD wrote:
> I do not beleive your statements apply to the topic at hand, software that 
> is for Apple IIs. I'd hate to see what Apple II software would take up a 
> DVD-R

Then allow me to restate my argument in a way your top-posting, Apple ][ 
analogy-missing brain can easily grasp.

The original statement by Greg Andrzejewski was, "The decision of how to 
distribute a piece of software is the decision of the author."

My reply: how many of the original authors of the Apple ][ software 
archived on asimov decided that their software should be available in 
that manner?  I would imagine that the answer is amazingly close to 
zero.  Instead of the author, some happy uploader ripped a copy of the 
disk image, transferred it to asimov, and now it's been mirror-ed and 
downloaded by hundreds, or maybe thousands of other people.

It's nice to think that the authors OKed this uncontrolled distribution 
of their software, but reality is they had no control of the process up 
front - the best they could do is react to the actions of others.  The 
decision was made by the person who ripped the disk image and uploaded it.

As for filling up a DVD-R, I would be in favor of a CD or DVD that 
included most of the popular Apple ][ emulator programs and all of the 
available disk images.  I've got similar CDs for MAME and a CP/M 
emulator.  Muy convenient.

Kelly