Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!rochester!pt!spice.cs.cmu.edu!mjp From: mjp@spice.cs.cmu.edu (Michael Portuesi) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Amiga Software Piracy (names, addresses, numbers and pictures) Message-ID: <1234@spice.cs.cmu.edu> Date: Mon, 13-Jul-87 03:20:04 EDT Article-I.D.: spice.1234 Posted: Mon Jul 13 03:20:04 1987 Date-Received: Tue, 14-Jul-87 00:53:42 EDT Reply-To: mjp@spice.cs.cmu.edu (Michael Portuesi) Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI Lines: 49 Keywords: Re: Amiga Software Piracy (names, addresses, numbers and pictures) guest@uscacsc.UUCP (guest) (and with good reason, too) writes: > What follows are three things. A list of the top ten Pirate Boards. The > list of commercial software on 1984 and a picture of Mr. Van Kley. After > seeing this, all this talk about copy protection vs. non-copy protection > seems just like bullshit to me. I'm interested in hearing how some of the software developers feel after seeing this. Some of the software on that list comes from people here on the net -- Infinity Software, Felsina Software, and ASDG, to name a few. I have a few points I'd like to make: 1) All copy protection schemes can be broken. I noticed that Silent Service was there -- wasn't that copy protected so well that the original didn't work? I'll put myself in the position of a commercial software developer for a moment. I am now the president of MegaWare, Ltd. My entire operation is < 5 people. Developing some far-out copy protection scheme will cost me a lot of money, and they're going to pirate my software just the same. Why should I copy protect something if I stand to lose even more money from it? Dropping out of the Amiga software market won't help me...there are pirates for every computer. Dropping out of the market entirely doesn't help me...then I make no income at all. Perhaps RMS had it right in the first place. Maybe I don't want to make an income from my software, but produce software for the benefit of other software in return. 2) I didn't see either the Lattice or the Manx compiler in that list. Perhaps that's because they're unusable without the documentation, and the documentation is much too difficult to duplicate. That's the reason why Borland publishes the Turbo Pascal manual as a small paperbound book -- It's damn hard to duplicate it in that form (won't fit in the sheet feeder), and using TP is pretty difficult without it. Of course, not every application is unusable without the manual. 3) Too bad we don't all have Digi-Views...I'd like to see what some of the faces behind the message headers look like. --M -- Mike Portuesi / Carnegie-Mellon University Computer Science Department ARPA: mjp@spice.cs.cmu.edu UUCP: {backbone-site}!spice.cs.cmu.edu!mjp BITNET: rainwalker@drycas (a uVax-1 run by CMU Computer Club...tons o' fun) "Paradise is exactly like where you are right now...only much, much better" --Laurie Anderson, "Lanugage is a Virus"