Laurent Daudelin wrote:
>
> It's really unfortunate, because I think that NewtonMad has more abandonned
> softwares, than softwares that are still commercially available. While I can
> understand your motivation, I would strongly suggest to the other mirrors to
> "screen" their archive, instead of merely deleting it as a whole. If we lost
> all NewtonMad's mirrors, I think that this will be a great loss for the
> Newton community.
>
> As you may have noticed, I'm really trying hard to answer all questions that
> are asked on NewtonTalk, and I must tell you that many times, the answer is
> lying on NewtonMad, again, for those softwares that are no longer
> supported/sold.
>
> As a developer myself, I wholeheartedly support the developers and I'm
> against any kind of piracy. However, if the developer is gone, and don't care
> anymore, I don't see why the softwares that can be of great help for some
> users couldn't be hosted and freely available. Usually, if the developer is
> gone, he won't even noticed. I'm not debating whether it's legally right or
> wrong, just my conscience.
>
Tell you what, you or someone else take the time to filter it out, and I
don't mean just those packages I was warned about today, and I'll mirror
it back again.
I'm sorry, but I personally don't have the patience to wade through 300MB
of stuff. One thing about NewtonMad is that it is huge. If it was all
shareware/freeware, sure, no bones about it, I wouldn't have killed it.
Fact is that two different companies that didn't abandon their products,
did notice while I didn't, that puts me at risk. I'm not about to operate
under a "keep it until they notice" flag. That just doesn't work legally.
I agree, it's a shame to lose it, but, I'm not going to run a warez
server.
I also agree that if a developer choses to abandon their software that
they should make it available freely, but if they don't, copyright law
states that you can't steal it during their life time plus 50 years. In
computer industry time this is an insane number, but that's the law.
Well whatever, as they say, no good deed goes unpunished...
> Again, please, think twice before deleting the whole archive.
Sorry, but that's really bad (legal) advice. Would you have everyone
hosting this put themselves at risk? Sure, if they're willing to purge
the copyrighted stuff out, and put back the rest, it would be great, but
otherwise, they risk quite a lot.
Bottom line: I'm willing to host an ftp archive for the good of the Newton
community. I'm just not willing to do so with one containing pirated
software.
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