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Re: ANN: Retiring from A2 world - Good Bye All!



Gary R. Utter wrote:

In fact, it's kinda the point. The Commodore 64 was in the same situation, piracy all over the place, and that certainly didn't kill it

And what was the difference between the Commodore 64 and the Apple II
in that regard? Both had rampant piracy, but the Apple II had Turley.


Erm, well... so your argument amounts to "both had pirates and both were ultimately out of a market, but we had one big pirate so we were worse off than the C64 with all it's smaller ones?"

I mean, the end result was kinda the same - and inevitable, since Apple and Commodore both decided to open new markets and focus on new hardware instead. Which tends to have the unfortunate side effect of leaving the older machines behind.

Let's face it, piracy was not the death of the AII market and it won't be the death of what's left now. Like I said, people who want to see *new* AppleII stuff will generally be willing to pay (reasonably) for it, being enthousiasts 'n all.

Now you're getting into personal abuse,

saying "spade" when a spade appears counts as abuse where you are from.

Abuse is not appreciated on Usenet no matter where you're from. That's what Email was invented for ;)

INcorrect. I WAS talkign about the situation of ten years ago, and he
chose to reply with regard to the situation of today,

Erm, no - the argument started with today's situation ("glad/bad that Turley's gone") and then several persons turned to the stone age past (again) to revive arguments that should've and could've been buried eons ago.


no interest in getting involved in. The original discussion (go back to
the beginning, willya?) was about the fact that Tom is unpopular


Doesn't sound a lot like past past tense to *me*   ;)


hated for real and specific reasons, and he chooses to say that those
reasons are irrelevant because the Apple II is a dead platform.

Well, he's right in the sense that it's not much use spewing or reviving these old grudges in an era where it doesn't matter anymore.

We understand WHY it happened, but since the reasons for the grudge (pirating profitable AII software) are basically irrelevant *now*, it's not needed to go on grudgin' *now*. Just let it rest.

The fact that the II was not
really a viable platform when based on a 65c02 or a 65816 is a SIDE
ISSUE that has nothing to do with the topic that we WERE discussing,

Well, if the fact that the platform isn't viable anymore technologically and therefore is dying anyway is ignored, it's more than just a side issue, I must say. Piracy speeding things along - but like I said, the C64 thrived among pirates all along - is possible, but not the deciding factor.

about Tom one way or another. I'm only trying to answer the question
that was asked in the beginning of this discussion. WHY some people
don't like Tom.

Well, I think that point was explained just fine, but it has to be said it has been explained and drilled a thousand times before in this group, so diggin' it up again ain't bringin' all that much improvement. Just more needless debate.

Still, I think this place would be better off without him. He is the
main catalyst for the whole anti-piracy fued, and THAT has been ripping
this place apart for years.

It wouldn't have "rippled" as much if his opponents had been a little less uptight about it, I must say. Whether there was a Tom or not, things would've been pirated anyway. He gave it a face, but he certainly wasn't the worst (mass-piracy for big profits was and is much worse), and he didn't singlehandedly kill the platform, either. He just pissed some programmers off by acknowledging he was sharing whether it was allowed or not.

The debate is so old, starting from the era when just about *everything* was still in the public domain - the Homebrew era - and everybody shared, untill Bill Gates and some others started making a profit and saw that in a culture of freesharing, not everybody was suddenly doing as they were told and not copy *their* stuff.

Regards, Rudy