Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!ukma!nrl-cmf!cmcl2!phri!dasys1!manes From: manes@dasys1.UUCP (Steve Manes) Newsgroups: comp.sources.d Subject: Re: SEA files against pkarc author Message-ID: <5317@dasys1.UUCP> Date: 4 Jul 88 05:19:47 GMT References: <5763@megaron.arizona.edu> <2150@rtech.UUCP> <9537@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> <4740@hoptoad.uucp> <373@clio.math.lsa.umich.edu> Reply-To: manes@dasys1.UUCP (Steve Manes) Organization: Datamerica Systems, NYC Lines: 38 In article <373@clio.math.lsa.umich.edu> hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu) writes: >Are you absolutely certain that Thom was *selling* the source >code? I also thought the source was public domain. No, Thom Henderson released the ARC source as a copyrighted (not public domain) work for no charge. However, even though the source is available on practically any decent BBS download board it doesn't diminish SEA's rights to the source. As I understand it, SEA doesn't wish to have this source in distribution anymore. I was told that SEA even demanded Compuserve to remove it from its libraries, which has been done, under protest from many users. It may be that this was on the advice of SEA's attornies in order to show the court that SEA had made an attempt to protect its rights to the property. I spoke with Thom this week. Although he didn't offer much insight into the suit, and I didn't push him, he said that the case revolves around SEA offering a Phil a license to use its property for "derivative works" and Phil refusing it. I know from an earlier conference on file archivers that Thom was peeved that his source had been used by other archive authors as a framework to develop other Shareware archive programs without those authors sharing in the wealth (or even giving him credit) and especially annoyed that Phil maintained the .ARC extension when PKARC began using an incompatible file format with SEA's ARC, which slowly killed ARC in the DOS world. Of course, PKARC's superior performance had a lot to do with it too. This raises some interesting questions for me, since I've been >sitting on the sources for ARC 5.21 for Unix for a couple weeks >now. Can I submit them to one of the sources groups? Probably not a good idea now. I know that both parties are auditing this newsgroup but probably won't respond publicly. -- +----- + Steve Manes + decvax!philabs!cmcl2!hombre!magpie!manes Magpie BBS: 212-420-0527 + SmartMail: manes@magpie.MASA.COM