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- From: nweaver@ocf.berkeley.edu (Nicholas Weaver)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.misc
- Subject: Re: BackSpace/NextWorld
- Message-ID: <17hae8INNe6q@agate.berkeley.edu>
- Date: 27 Aug 92 01:16:56 GMT
- References: <BtLMu8.6CG@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> <1992Aug26.212116.527@menudo.uh.edu>
- Organization: U.C. Berkeley Open Computing Facility
- Lines: 31
- NNTP-Posting-Host: ocf.berkeley.edu
-
- In article <1992Aug26.212116.527@menudo.uh.edu> sears@tree.egr.uh.edu writes:
- >Backspace is now an example on the 3.0 release CD-Rom
- >(NextDeveloper/Examples/AppKit). That probably has something to do with why
- >NeXT has requested that Backspace is no longer distributed...
-
- No. This first part of the story is clouded in shadow. Apparantly,
- some developer who was planning or was marketing a screen saver/screen
- locker got rather put off by a NeXT employee making and releasing BackSpace
- to the world. A few months (By which time Backspace was a staple of the
- NeXT community), the complaint apparantly occured. Or something like that.
- The result was that NeXT requested the removal of BackSpace, and the author,
- Samuel G. Strepper, complied. Actually, BackSpace shouldn't have been
- released in the first place, upon afterthought, and all PD/Shareware
- releases by NeXT employees need to now be cleared by NeXT before doing so.
- Just common sense. NeXT employees should not undercut developers needlessly.
-
- But there was such a ROAR over the removal fo backspace, that a few
- weeks later, a couple of days before the Expo, they announced that it would
- be included in the next OS release as an example. Alas, it was too late for
- me, as I had already made up my "Save BackSpace" T SHirt to wear to the
- expo. But at least I saw what the results were. The calibre of screen
- saver entries at the expo is much higher then there probably would have
- been, as well as creating a unified screen saver image format. Metro-tools,
- a multi use program, includes its own and can run BackSpace modules. And
- PixelSaver, a preferences driven, root level, works when logged out, also
- includes a module to run backsapce modules. So i think it was beneficial in
- the long run. Enough ranting. Ciao all.
- --
- Nicholas C. Weaver
- nweaver@ocf.berkeley.edu nweaver@soda.berkeley.edu
- It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, .signifying nothing.
-