Columbia Kermit/kermit.zip/newsgroups/misc.19950929-19951130/[e-mail]_Sun Oct 24 01:21:55 1995.msg

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From: [e-mail] (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.kermit.misc
Subject: Re: how to get  DOS kermit c source code?
Date: 23 Oct 1995 20:21:55 -0500
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In article <[e-mail]>,
Joe Doupnik <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> No, I don't have trouble understanding it, they just aren't free if
>> you want to modify them and restribute them to do something useful,
>> or to use them as part of a service.  In other words they are only
>> free if you don't need them.
>
>    No. Your statement can be read as "I want Kermit to be free
>in the sense I can make money from it or use it to sell something
>else which makes money for me, etc."  We have covered this ground
>in detail over the past year or so.

But you keep missing the fact that not only can't someone improve
kermit and sell it, they also can't improve it and give it away
as has happened with lots of other software.  And it still isn't
quite clear what is wrong with someone else getting some value
from the program. In the case of the DOS version, you are the primary
author so I respect your wishes about how it should be handled,
but I think the stuff going back to the old days should have
been split cleanly between free versions that someone else could
improve and distribute and the versions done by the current team
with its restrictions.  Then maybe there could be *some* version
of kermit included with unix distributions, including the free ones.
What good does it do to have kermit at one end only?

>> Think back 10 years ago and consider which of "kermit" or "a full
>> tcp/ip implementation" you would have expected to find included
>> at no extra cost in small computer operating systems, which would
>> be used more for dial-up communications, which would be available
>> in source code with modifications for special purposes from
>> many sources.
>
>    See above since it's basically the same situation.
>
>>  I guessed wrong.  And the difference is not in whether
>> the code is copyrighted or not.  It has to do with which university
>> owns the copyright and what the fine print says.  But I wish I could
>> dig up those copies from the early eighties where the code was
>> contributed from many sources and I thought the emphasis was on keeping
>> it free so I could see if my memory is just getting hazy.
>    Les, this is so vague as to be meaningless.

What I'm saying is that Berkeley copyrighted code has found it's way
into almost everything, and has helped a lot of people.  There is
room for freeBSD, BSDI, and things like 'slirp', a slip/ppp emulation
that is basically a full tcp/ip implementation running in user
space that would never have happened if the base code had been
restricted.  Once upon a time I thought that was the philosopy
behind kermit too.

Les Mikesell
  [e-mail]