Re: History; code

[Ed Cray cray@xxxxxxxx]

Norman:

Nice touch, citing Gogl. Wish I were as well read.

However, I would disagree about the ethical question. Perhaps someone in
India might be able to exploit moribund Xywrite, but we in the United
States cannot, neither legally nor, I submit, ethically.

Consider this: I am the author of some 16 books. Most are out of print,
but every once in a while (most recently the State Department) someone
proposes, quite out of the blue, to reprint one of these books. I haven't
continued to "develop" these books. Should they be able to reprint my
books, or translate them into Chinese and whatever is the dominant
language of Indonesia without paying some token royalty? (In fact, the
government can "override" my copyright and reprint my book all it wants,
but doesn't as a matter of policy.)

As much as I love Xywrite -- and I will go to my grave using it despite
the fact that I have purchased Nota Bene -- I have neither ethical nor
legal right to appropriate it for my own use.

Ed

On Sun, 21 Oct 2001, Norman Bauman wrote:

> Perhaps if you wanted to legally acquire a new copy of XyWrite, you could
> buy the rights from somebody who used to use it but doesn't any more, and
> them make a copy from anybody's floppy disks or hard drive.
>
> Like in Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls.
>
> Once again I would point out that if you *did* copy XyWrite illegally,
> nothing would happen to you because there would be nobody to prosecute you.
> And as for ethics, there are many countries in which patents can be voided
> for failure to work the patent. I don't know if there is something like
> that in the US.
>
> Norman
>
>
> At 04:06 PM 10/20/01 -0400, Patricia M. Godfrey wrote:
>
> >	One reason for trying to get rights to the code is that without it, no
> >one _new_ will ever be able to acquire, install, and learn XyWrite
> >legally. The EULA says we cannot make copies except for "archival
> >purposes." So prospective users cannot buy it, and we cannot legally give
> >it to them.
>
>
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> Norman Bauman
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