24 Nov
2004
24 Nov
'04
2:25 a.m.
On Wed, 24 Nov 2004, Dave Dunfield wrote:
Granted it would be nice if they asked, but this is
probably a lot of
extra overhead in the preparation of a large project, and you *DO* make
the project freely available to people who live in the city / have
high-speed-connections.
Hi Dave.
You make good points overall, but I don't think it takes very much effort
to contact the authors/producers of each contribution on the CD. It's
just a matter of basic courtesy. This would take maybe an hour or two of
e-mail. They're charging $50 per CD. That's about a dollar in production
costs and $49 of profit. Assuming they sell even 5, that's still a good
return for material to which they didn't contribute.
There was a similar thread a few months back, when one
of the guys who
maintains a site of archived manuals got upset that another guy was
including some of "his" manuals on a DVD that he was selling for $30
You're referring to Al. No, he did not refer to the material as "his".
He was mainly objecting to the fact that no credit whatsoever was given.
Do you realize how much time, not to mention MONEY, Al puts into
maintaining and scanning that manual archive so people can download it
for FREE or even SELL compilation CDs? Did I mention MONEY? Not only has
Al put literally thousands(?) of hours into scanning those documents, he
also put THOUSANDS of dollars into acquiring those manuals, and THOUSANDS
of dollars more on acquiring the scanning hardware, and I'm sure the costs
of maintaining his server and internet connection is not insignificant
either. Now, considering the time and effort and actual money Al has put
into that project, I don't think his getting a little bent out of shape
is out of line. A simple, "Thanks to Al Kossow for all his hard work in
making these manuals available" would have been a nice gesture, but even
that courtesy was apparently too much to extend by the compiler. Fie.
(and gives to anyone who contributes material which is
how I got it) -
Insisting that I download the material prevents me from bring able to
obtain most of the larger manuals (some of which I would really like to
get). - Really annoying, considering that he doesn't have permission
from most of the original authors, and claims to be preserving them and
"making them available" ... but apparently only to the "high-speed"
elite (but again I rant :-)
He doesn't "claim" to be preserving them. He *IS* preserving them!
I'm sorry, but have some fucking respect.
Lets have a show of hands ... anyone participatng in
this list ever
distrbure any material without obtaining explicit permission from the
orignal author?
The question is, do you make a practice of this?
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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