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

["Gary R. Utter" <utter@syndicomm.com>]

In article <3D098EA5.8060000@home.nl>, Ruud Dingemans <rtech@home.nl>
wrote:

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

Nonsense. Abuse is a major form of recreation on Usenet. (Perhaps you
limit yourself to groups that are populated only by the polite and
intelligent, but those are the exception.)

> 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.

You're just NOT paying attention. "Pirating profitable AII software" is
not the reason for the grudge. Turleys behaviour which included piracy
and outright theft, is the reason for the grudge, but it is not the
piracy and outright theft per se that are at the bottom. Turleys
behaviour is the reason for the rabid anti piracy stance of some
segments of the Apple II community. Anti piracy is the fruit, anti
Turleyism is the tree. 

And I am not going on grudgin, I am explaining why other people are
grudgin. Don't shoot the messenger, bucko.

> 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.

Right, I SAID that. Turley was not the deciding factor, he was not "the
straw that broke the camels back", but he was ONE of the straws. (I
trust you are familiar with that allegory.)

> 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.

There was never any mass piracy for big profit in the Apple II world.
And he did a LOT more than share, and acknowledge that he was sharing.
He organized and promoted an organization (One World Software Wizards)
whose goal was to "share" as much as possible. They published
newsletters, distributed, publicly, sector edited commercial software,
etc. 1WSW relied on juveniles who did not know what they were getting
into, tapped thier enthusiasm, thier energy, to distribute and
publicize this stuff. 1WSW relied on persuading the gullible to host
thier servers full of pirated software. Tom wouldn't do this himself,
he would sucker other people into committing actual illegal acts FOR
him. All while bragging what a good samaritan he was, what a saviour of
the Apple II community. And among the other acts of this "saviour" was
the public trashing of good hard working people whose only crime was
objecting to what Tom was doing, particularly in cases where he was
flat out stealing thier software.

> 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...

Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, sure, sure. I've heard it all before, and I'm
not going there. It's not relevant, because that is not what Tom was
doing, that was what Tom was PRETENDING to do.