Tom Jennings Fido 125/1 6 November, 85 This is in response to Paula Giese's article in newsletter 238, about "stolen" Fido. The article is a good one, and you can generalize "Fido" or whatever to be any useable so-called "Public Domain" program; you probably have seen the articles in Infoworld and others about "Corporate world discovers ShareWare". I wish they hadn't found it, it wasn't lost, for them to find in the first place! Shareware was meant for turkeys like you and I, for fun and games, not to save your employer money. Corporate use of shareware is a perversion of most authors' intent. I am not going to elaborate on this further, however, it's covered elsewhere, and I just don't have the time at this moment. I am considering making my future program too silly to be useful for corporate use, wierd messages, funny prompts, etc. There are some problems with the article as it stands also. First, the policy fo Fido Software (me!) has changed in the last year or two. Fido's previous to version 11 were actually "public domain". I even said so. WHAT A STUPID THING! NEVER say "public domain"! You have NO rights to your software if you do. Let others use it, fine, but you want to have rights to it ultimately. The policy was "make as many copies as you need". Period. I later changed this to "if you have a small number of systems, copy it. If you need lots of copies, contact me". It was still public domain. Still stupid. The current versions are different. The policy probably won't change in substance again. No longer is Fido public domain; the policy (below) is very clear, and allows free, unlimited use in most cases. Also I have to cover some specific points in Paula's article. First, Southwestern Bell has had a Fido since way back when there were less than 20 nodes, and possibly pre- FidoNet. I was pleased to have ANY one use the crummy thing. They are "grandfather claused" in any case, and have it with my blessings. (I assume that they have a system or two, being used internally.) There are many other large corporations that are also grandfathered or have paid for Fido. As an aside, I doubt that the people running the Fido for S.W. Bell are the ones who screwed the kid who was hit with the tariff. All S.W. Bell employees are not interchangeable, same as any other company. The perpetrators of that stupid policy are not the ones you get to talk to on the phone, they are old dinosaurs in some office building somewhere, who, under U.S. law, are not responsible for their actions, and want to make your life as miserable as theirs. Look, in general, I'm just not going to lose any sleep, nor get myself an ulcer, worrying about "stolen programs". Unlike Lotus (may they rot in Hell) I do not universally consider not-paid-for programs "lost income". "Not paid for" is not the same as "lost money". It's a long, complicated subject that I won't elaborate on here, but if you were around in early CP/M days, you will recall the flap about WordStar. "Stolen" WordStar made them more money than any amount of advertising; for example, I worked for a large research laboratory; I "stole" WS.COM, everyone ran it and loved it, and the lab bought 10 copies the next week! (Well, it took 3 months to procure anything, that was the original problem ...) There are however many instances that just piss me off. The GTE thing for instance. Blatant theivery. They did pay for it eventually, I think; it was a GTE employee who mailed me a personal check, not a GTE check. He said it was for GTE, so I didn't argue. The current Fido Software policy is exactly as follows: "Fido Software provides the Fido/FidoNet software (Fido) both to the Bulletin Board community at large as a public service, and to all other users as a commercial product, available for a fee. "Fido can be used without charge only if the software is used to provide a publicly available, publicly accessible system open to anyone. Restrictions such as subscriptions may be used, but anyone still must be eligible to use it. "All other uses of Fido are considered to be private or commercial, and a copy of Fido system must be purchased from Fido Software for each computer system. The purchase allows you to get updated software as versions come out, and a printed manual. Financial support from corporations and other institutions ensures that Fido will continue to be maintained and updated. If you have large scale or special requirements, simple arrangements can be made. "The intent of this policy is simple and fairly clear; Fido is intended as a gesture of goodwill towards the Bulletin Board community first, and other, commercial and private uses fund maintenaince and further development. This policy is no different than donating products or services to a school or other institution as a gesture of goodwill. " I think this is pretty clear and straightforward. I don't care if you charge for access to your board. I don't care if you are a fascist and run your BBS like a prison ship. I just don't care. As long as it's a public access BBS, I don't care. (If you wanna juggle definitions to make it fit I still don't care!) If you are selling Fido, or using it to run a business, and you haven't paid for it, then I do care. Please mail money. If the phone number is a secret, then no way it's a publically accessible board, buy the goddamn thing, you get updates cheap. I do not use *any* stolen programs in my work as an employee nor for Fido Software. None, zippo. Please don't ask me to clarify specific installations, or try to explain why your case is different than any other, use your own judgement. What I don't know doesn't hurt me (so they say), and there is nothing I can do about it anyways. Like I said before, it's not really that big an issue, just "follow your heart" and you will know what it is you should do ... Ref: FidoNews 2-39 (11-Nov-1985) http://195.226.109.55/jhassler/wif/doks/fnews/fido239.txt By: Tom Jennings