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
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