Columbia Kermit/kermit.zip/newsgroups/misc.19960425-19960715/[e-mail] _Mon May 13 10:03:30 1996.msg

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From: [e-mail] (Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr.)
Subject: Re: Kermit licensing (was: Caldera's WordPerfect)
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Organization: St. Peter's College, US
Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 06:57:13 GMT
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In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Evan Leibovitch) writes:
> In article <4n51of$[e-mail]>,
>     Frank da Cruz <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>These programs, however, may not be freely redistributed by companies to
>>their customers and clients, companies like:
>
> Ah, so they're NOT free ... make up your mind!
>
> Big bloody deal. I just give instructions so that my clients can fetch Kermit
> themselves --  that is, those clients who still need it; fewer and fewer
> of them do (see below).

  I think you're missing the point. If someone fetches Kermit from Columbia
and installs it, then a) they have an idea where it comes from, and b) they
might have even read the info on support.

  I have personally seen a number of cases where Kermit "came with" another
package or system and the vendor of that other package or system told their
customers "just call Columbia for free support".

  As I understand it, the reason you (or any other individual) can still
fetch copies of Kermit executables or sources is *because* the Kermit folks
want you to be able to have them for free. They just don't want anyone else
making money off the software without giving something back to support fur-
ther development or support.

> At one time I regularly encouraged customers to buy the books which
> included the Kermit programming. I've stopped that practise, as
> part of my own personal boycott of Columbia's insane distribution
> policies.

  As a user and developer, I was upset when I first heard that the MS-DOS
Kermit documentation was being frozen in favor of the commercial Kermit
book. However, the documentation (in the form of the book) is vastly im-
proved from the notes that shipped with earlier versions of MS-Kermit.
When my users ask me questions, I point them to our bookstore and tell
them to go buy the manual (or read a copy in our library if they prefer).

  Would you have any complaints if the books were from an independent
source (say, "Kermit for Dummies")? If that's Ok with you, aren't you
applying a double standard here?

> Kermit's absolutely assinine and arbitrary distribution procedures
> (you can download it for free, but you can't get it freely on a CD)
> hurt only the end-users.

  I can do that with Netscape too. Doesn't seem to have hurt either
Netscape-the-company or Netscape-the-product. And if I'm not an edu-
cational site, I have to either pay for Netscape after 30 days or cease
using it, while I can continue to use the Kermit I downloaded forever.

> Yup, software that involved the contributions of hundreds, of people
> outside of Columbia who haven't received a cent either. Yet Columbia
> now derives revenue from their efforts, and has indulged in policies
> that prohobit outsiders from exploiting the value of Kermit, as Kermit
> has exploited the value of outsiders in the past. How hypocritical!

  How much work have you contributed to Kermit? Look at people like Joe
Doupnik (MS-Kermit) or the people like myself who contributed to C-Kermit.
The fact that I'm writing this might give you an idea that I'm not being
"expolited".

>>Some for-profit companies would like to take our work and gain commercial
>>advantage from it, directly or indirectly, without contributing anything
>>back. This is short-sighted.
>
> On the contrary, my friend, this is not only not short-sighted, it is one
> of the backbones of the Free Software Foundation, and everything produced
> by the GNU and Linux projects (amongst many, many others).

  So? They use one model, Kermit uses another.

> Kermit is in the minority; the ever-shrinking, lonely minority.
> Far more complex and significant pieces of software than Kermit have
> emerged that have been either indifferent or encouraging to commercial
> distribution. Mosaic. CNews and INN. X Windows (and XFree86). TeX.

  X Windows wasn't done by uncompensated volunteers. There was some serious
backing from the start. If Kermit had similar backing things might have been
different.

  Today's homework assignment: go look at Ghostscript. Report back.

> So what? The code, as it sits, is quite robust. If the Kermit Project
> dissapeared tomorrow and its code GPL'd, it would live on quite well,
> thank you. Its maintenance would be taken up by of competent programmers
> who would extend it and support it in ways you may never have imagined.

  I really doubt that. We'd been asking for help for a *long* time and while
we got a "sure, I'll do that" from some *very* big names in "the business",
nothing happened. VMS C-Kermit would still be unusable if I didn't start
fooling with it in my spare time, rewriting the file I/O from scratch and
doing substantial work in the other OS-dependent modules. Aside from my
changes and the work Frank did, the *only* other changes made to it were a
few things that people found annoying enough to fix. *Nobody* else did any-
thing with the VMS stuff, despite a large portion of the VMS community ask-
ing for features. This is a platform where most systems have at least one
programmer (compared with the PC platform, for example).

> And people who wanted support would find it, even if Columbia's
> 'services' dried up overnight. You and Christine might even see higher
> book royalties as more people would have to RTFM if they had a problem.

  Sure. The only reason people don't have the books is because vendors
were giving them the software without it, and because users were calling
the "free" support number.

> There are precedents, you know. Major pieces of work such as Postgres
> and Smail2 have undergone major changes in stewardship, and both are as
> useful today (if not moreso) as when they were under their inventors' wings.

  And major packages have been taken commercial as well. Most of those
packages then abandoned development on their free versions, while the free
Kermits are still enhanced, many by volunteers.

> It's all becoming a moot point anyway. The Kermit programs are fast
> becoming dinosours, legacy tools to communicate with legacy computers,
> required only when today's better tools like ftp or Seyon or Taylor UUCP
> (all GPL'd tools) aren't available. Every time a CTOS or RT-11 system gets
> switched off for the last time, another Kermit user becomes an ex-user.
> Your user base, and your influence, is shrinking.

  A good reason for a shrinking user base was that Kermit wasn't available
for the world's most popular platforms - the Microsoft Windows family. There
were earlier efforts, but they stalled due to lack of volunteers.

  Most of the computers ever built are running today, and the majority of
them are Windows PC's. Kermit 95 is now available to meet their needs.

  My guess is that Kermit 95 is commercial because *nobody* could be found
to implement it for free. The alternative was either to not write it or to
hire someone to do the work. If someone was hired, what do you think they
should be paid with?

  Kermit 95 includes *my* "labeled file" design (I suggested it, and Frank
and Joe made improvements, and then I coded it). I'm not jumping up and down
for a share of the profits. Any changes I make to C-Kermit will go back to
Columbia, where they will find their way into both free and commercial soft-
ware.

  If more people were willing to contribute, maybe we wouldn't be in this
situation, but they weren't, despite requests that occasionally took on the
tone of out-and-out begging on the Kermit project's part.

> It would seriously surprise me to hear you're netting any money at
> all on Kermit95. Columbia made good on its intentions to go full-blown
> commercial with Kermit95 -- why else would Kermit people go ape over the
> thought of their work being commercially exploited unless they saw the
> others as competition? Yet there's not a single computer store, bookshop,
> or distributor that I know that sells it. The Kermit Project's disgust
> for commercial enterprises has come back to bite it in the tail, as
> technically inferior products such as TinyTerm eat Kermit95 for lunch
> in the marketplace.

  I don't have the numbers (I've never asked and I don't really care to
know) but I assume it's paying its own way or you'd see development stop.
If it covers its costs and lets the Kermit folks hire phone support people,
what do you (or any of us) care how well it sells?

    Terry Kennedy          Operations Manager, Academic Computing
    [e-mail]      St. Peter's College, Jersey City, NJ USA
        [phone] (voice)   [phone] (FAX)