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Chapter Ten: PUBLIC DOMAIN PROGRAMS
PD OR NOT PD.
THAT IS THE QUESTION.
FOR WHETHER TIS NOBLER...
FROM "COLLECTED
WORKS OF PHIL
BRIDGES, BARD OF THE
AIRWAVES" (PENGUIN,
ISBN 004-132-93465-
007)
There exists a large amount of free or cheap programs for the ST and other
machines. These are called PUBLIC DOMAIN programs (usually just PD's).
Public Domain programs are written and distributed outside the commercial
market. You can find them either from "services" which charge a small amount
(about 3 to 5 dollars) or from user groups, of which there are several kinds:
the ones who like to make money out of the members and charge about 5 to 6 or
even 10 dollars, the ones which charge a small service fee, or the ones
which share them for free.
About the legal aspects of PD's:
There's a great deal of confusion about the kinds of programs. Most people
think that PD programs don't belong to anyone. That's not true. There are
various legal terms about copyrights which should be kept straight. Copyright
law comes from property law and that comes from land law. The main principle
in land law is "First is Right." (The real principle is however "Money
talks." But that's another issue.) So whoever got there first, or came up with
it first, owns it. Basically, everything belongs to some-body. The question
is: which and what kind of somebody owns it, and which and what kind of
somebody can use it. All "intellectual material", books, plays, films,
computer programs, databases, numbering systems, etc. has a legal nature.
They all have a copyright. That copyright defines a) who owns the title to
the program b) who can use it and c) who can collect a fee for its use. The
original author has a natural right to his material for a specific amount of
time, usually 75 years or so, depending on that country's laws. He or she may
sell or rent or give away that copyright, either for a fixed amount, or for a
percentage, or for nothing. If he or she still has the copyright at death, then
the copyright passes along, with the house, the toaster, and the cat, to the
family or whoever is in the will. After being dead seventyfive years
(depending on countries), the author automati-cally loses those rights and the
material becomes PUBLIC DOMAIN (this is not spelled (domainE"). The phrase
"public domain" comes from land law: "domain" means "property." There's private
domain, restricted domain, government domain, the King's domain, etc. That
just means who owns the title to it. When a piece of land is used by everyone,
like a park, then it is public domain; anybody can go there. Books are good
examples of public domain. For example, Gunther Grass is still alive, and
owns copyrights to his books. Anyone who performs a play by Tennessee Williams,
who died in the 60's, must send part of the money to his family (and they can
sell those rights). But if you use a play by Shakespeare, who is very dead,
then you don't have to send money to anyone, because "all of us" own
Shakespeare's plays; all of his plays are PUBLIC DOMAIN. The point is,
everything, even the Moon, has a legal status.
The AUTHOR of the title can be one person, a group of persons, or everyone.
John wrote a PRG, and thus automatically owns it. John can sell it to Jane. John
can also give the program to all French women, or to the world.
If John, the author, wrote the program while he was working for someone else,
then that employer owns the program. If John writes the program during company
hours, his boss gets rich. But if John writes a program to help him deal
with his boss's stupid computers, then the lawyers get rich. This is a very
complicated area; the main complication is the huge amounts of money which
can be involved.
Jane, who bought the title to the program, is the OWNER. John can either sell
the title entirely to her, so that he only gets money and not even a Christmas
card. Or John can lease the title to her, so that after ten years or
whatever conditions they put in the contract, it goes back to him. The OWNER
can be one person, a corporation, whatever.
Part of the rights of owners is to decide who may use the property. The
OWNER may define the USER. That can be either one person (only Karen) or a
large group of persons, whom Jane can define (all of her friends, but no boys.
If boys use it, they are illegal users.) or even everyone in the world.
Lastly, Jane can decide what USERS have to pay for that use: she can set the
FEE (either money or things). The amount of the FEE can be large, small, or
zero. A zero fee is just that, no charge, but it is still a fee. Jane can also
decide who gets the money. That can be her or her friends or even Amnesty
International. John can write the program and sell it to Jane, who has a
computer magazine and then, being a nice person and to get more readers and
destroy the other magazine, publishes it for her readers to use for zero
fees. Jane still owns the title; we just get to use it for free.
A program then is written by John, who sells the title, but not the film
rights, to Jane, who then sells its use, but not the title, to companies.
When Jane dies, her testament (the will) gives the fee, but not the title, to
Amnesty International (they now get big checks in the mail); her testament gives
the title to her cat. The cat's lawyer then leases the the title to Paul
McCartney, who makes a silly song about it. Paul, being a nice guy,
announces in his next record that his fans can use the program for free.
John then leases the film rights to a film company owned by Silvester
Stallone. See? You can use a program for free, but that doesn't mean anything
about who owns it or who has the rights to it.
(Those are the type of questions you get in law school. You have five minutes
to answer: Can Amnesty sue the cat to force Paul to raise the fee? May Gitte,
who divorced Silvester, wiggle her breasts to the song's tune in her next
video? (You must settle first whether California or Danish divorce law
controls Silves-ter's rights to husband/wife property, namely, if he paid for
her breast "improvements," does he have a right to the money made with them?
Can he argue for a copyright interest on the grounds that they are artistic (an
intellectual product?).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Most PD's are the following: John writes it and keeps all titles and rights. He
defines the legal users as a) all private users b) no commercial users. The
user fee is either zero (freeware) or voluntarily defined by the user
(shareware). John owns it, we use it.
With computers, users tend to use the word "public domain" to mean "free"
and "copyright" to mean "commercial." You can see that this is a confusion.
Everything is copyright. Some things are cheap copyright and somethings are
expensive copyright. Of the expensive copyright, there is commercial software.
Then comes SHAREWARE. The person who writes shareware releases (gives out) his
material to the public (he shares it) and asks for a small voluntary
contribution in return. The author still owns the rights to the program.
FREEWARE data is given out and the author does not ask for anything, but he
still owns the rights to the program. Finally, there is HACKED data. We
usually think of HACKED data as something bad. Someone has gone into the
program and changed it (fx NASA's lauch rocket termination programs). Either
a commercial program has the copyright messages missing, or Shareware programs
suddenly get new addresses, and requests for money, to guess who. Or
Freeware suddenly gets a shareware status, so that people began sending money
to some guy. HACKED data can also be good. Someone went into a poor program
and took out a few bugs. That's also hacked. HACKING just means opening a PRG
and changing the way it works, for better or worse.
Programs got their legal status in 1981. Until then, codes were these obscure
things that programers did on large systems. Programers, being a bunch of
cowboys, traded codes with each other (on corporate time, of course).
In 1981, the large corporations went crying to Congress, saying that they
were not making the billions to which they had a right. Congress, made up
mostly of lawyers, agreed, and programs became "intellectual property"
(this is what we call a "legal fiction"). It became outlawed to copy and
distribute programs.
The PD scene is not just for computers and old books. Punk musicians, to
the total outrage of music corporations (especially the lawyers), released
records as public domain. This act caused a shock in the industry; what is
music all about, anyway? Punk made the point that music is not just pretty
sounds.
If someone wrote a program and gave it out as freeware/shareware, they are nice
people. If you have a freeware/shareware program which becomes a regular part
of your system, think about sending something to the author. Blank disks, for
example, or some money. Your imagination may also come into play. Shareware and
freeware exists and will continue to exist as an alternative to the
commercial $$$$$ system. None of these great cheap computers would have
ever happened if IBM's lawyers had control over those kids in garages in
California.
Many of us have sent money or disks to PD authors; we nearly always get a
response: either a manual, or an improved version, or other programs. It is
nice to find out that there is a human behind that program you use.
Young Germans have been the major force in ST PD's. Thirty or fourty
programs a month are released in West Germany; many are of very high quality, as
good as or better than commercial versions.
Richard Seel, who writes in ST WORLD, recently brought up a point about
shareware. The person who releases the program as shareware is depending on a
free distribution network made up mostly of volunteers. This is in effect an
exploitation of those volunteers for commercial purposes. Selling a program
to a distribution house brings in a whopping 5%. You get very little for it.
But if shareware develops into a large system, then such persons could recieve
much more. Do shareware authors make money?
No. I have talked (written) with several shareware authors. One got around 50
pounds in response from several people. Most get an occasional letter. An
American got around 120$ all in all. No one is making money on shareware. The
idea is about as sucessful as Abbie Hoffman's sugesstion for "voluntary
taxation." (In his case, he meant sharing the joints).
The PD scene is sadly made up of the hardcore 5%: a small crew of enthusiasts
do all the work; the rest enjoy. If you want to contribute: make
suggestions to the authors of your favorite programs. Ideas, comments,
improvements. Extra abilities. Point out bugs. This is very helpful. Send
donations of money or disks, if you can.
There is very little really computer "Public Domain;" programmers have only been
around for twenty years or so. Just think of it! When the programmer to your
favorite game dies and seventyfive years go by, that game will then become
public domain. You can then sell it all you like. To Museums of Ancient
History, for example.
Most of my IBM friends, coming from the primitive past think that programs are
either "copyright", meaning expensive, or "hacked", meaning that the copy
protection has been removed. Just copying a program doesn't mean that it has
been "hacked"; IBM people get so excited about anything if it works. Most of
them think that all PD's are hacked programs. They also think that upgrading to
640KB at 4.77 Mhz is the future. They get confused when you point out that the
new PS series is not PC compatible.
Oh, by the way, the new IBM's are very creative. IBM is a company which makes
the future. They just discovered something called WINDOWS. They're all hot
about it. And DESKTOPS. They also have invented the 3.5 inch disk. The
Indians were in the Americas 25,000 years before Columbus. Who got all the
credit? The only thing positive in it for us is cheaper disks. All these
third party disk manufacturers will move into the 3.5 disk market, bringing
the price down. My disk box is falling in price just as fast as Nancy Reagan's
book on decorating the White House.
While we are talking about the legal rights of companies, we can also ask about
the legal rights of users. That is simple.
The legal rights of users:
None.
That's right. We have none. Your second lesson in law is: companies
write the law. And they write it entirely only to protect their interests.
They have lots of laws, with lots of penalties, to protect themselves. But
protect you? Hah!
You buy a program because it promises to "solve your problems. Deal with your
paperwork. Do your taxes. Save your time!" It says that in the advertising; it
says so on the box. But when you read the very small print, it says: "The
company is not responsible in any way for errors or faults in the program: if it
messes up your work, destroys your company, ruins your life, so long, sucker!"
I must clearly emphasize this point. You use the program at your own risk. If
you do a spreadsheet analysis of your company or house, you must be able to
independantly analyse and check the results. If the program has made a
mistake, tough luck. If you use a program for professional work, you must
check and cross check the results.
There are lawsuits in court in the US against software companies on this point.
The software company association is spending a lot of money fighting this issue.
Should a program be held to legal responsibility? Of course. Especially
so if the producer promises ("We solve your problems! For Professional
Use!"); then if his program ruins you, he must pay. Every single other product
on the market is responsible to the consumer.
Another legal point. Computer companies, being new to capitalism, are starting
from the beginning and moving forward through the various periods. There was
the tribal period (programmers sharing and cooperating). Then the feudal
period (IBM and Macs being closed machines). We are now in the sea pirates
period. Compa-nies, to expand their markets, attack each other and stake out
territories. IBM is the biggest pirate; their corporate history reads like
Black Bart and the Carribean Jolly Rodgers. Users suffer; until now, to
force you to buy their machines at fixed prices in fixed territories and avoid
the bother of competition, the companies had annouced that warranties were
worthless if the machine had been bought somewhere else cheaper. The
European Common Market Court in Strasbourg put an end to that nonsense: any
product bought anywhere in the Common Market with a valid warranty in a
country will have a valid warranty anywhere else in the Common Market. If a
Dane saves money by buying his computer in West Germany, the Danish branch
of the corporation must recognize the warranty and provide warranty service.
About PD programs:
PD's then is a very loose term which covers all programs distributed
outside the commercial structure. PD's give you a terrific opportunity to
look at a whole range of programs which you otherwise can't afford to buy
which do all sorts of things which show you the possibilities and abilities of
the computer.
Many PD's are Demos or demonstration PRGs. Basically advertising for a
commercial PRG. You get to see how the program works. Usually you are not
able to save your work or such. This should be more widespread; you can see a
program for yourself. But it should be stated that such a disk is advertising;
it's not right to pay to see advertising.
Other PD's are pre-release versions or test versions of commer-cial programs;
some are even commercial programs which never made it into distribution.
And many PD's are garbage PRGs; poorly written, not very creative, or
not doing anything. You can't really say that they run, actually, it's more
that they crash. Not much different than commercial programs.
But there are worthwhile PD's. Most of these are utilities: ramdisks,
spoolers, fast loaders, etc; little programs which take only a few hours to
write and can't really justify 30 or 40 dollars. Since they are simple
routines, they usually function correctly and make it easier to work with the
machine. The best copy programs I've seen yet are PD (FCOPY2, and
ALPHAFORMAT). There are PRGs which read and print the directories of a disk so
that you can have a label or a page of disk directories (the best yet is
DISKSORT.V2. No commercial program can compete with it). File RECOVER PRGs
help you get lost files back; disk monitors as well. There are a great number
of calculators which only barely use the computer's enourmous mathematical
ability; this is like using a Lamborghini as a doorstop. (no, that is not a
kind of spaghetti). (Commo-doorstop?) (Guess what Americans call Commo-dore
users? Commies!) All sorts of little clocks put the correct time in the corner
of your screen and onto your disk files. PD's can also be large, complicated
programs which work very well. AIM, the ATARI Image Maker, is a six disk
scientific image enhancement and manipulation system, for which there is
no commercial equivilent. For modems, there are good programs which work with
all the aspects of communications: modem PRGs (UNITERM is very good),
encrypting (so others can't read your texts), compressors (to save telephone
time)(ARC), etc. Several excellent PD drawing programs exist; these are better
than 70$ commercial ones (for example, MASTERPAINTER and PUBLIC PAINTER (up
to 24 screens, GEM based, animation, and much faster rota-
tion/distortion routines). Wordprocessors in Arabic and Russian. Music editors
as well. Small games are often PD's; 3-D labyrinths are possible only on
computers. And of course there are are silly and funny programs which put
little crabs into your computer which eat at the screen and so on.
For a full list of our UG's PD's, either download it free from the BBS or
send a blank disk (with a selfaddressed, stamped envelope).
The IBM scene is impressive. Standard catalogues are on two double sided
disks; there's about 500 disks in most services. On a CD disk (that's right.
An IBM PC PD CD) from the California Personal Computer Special Interest Group
(PC SIG) (yep. the CA PC SIG IBM PC PD CD) some 40,OOO PD's are collected.
This costs about 200$. Macs have a large collection of PD's. The Amiga, with
its enormously complicated screen and operating system, tends to have many
text files and source codes to help programers deal with the machine. Amigas,
with their excellent screen, also have lots of pictures. Fred Fish has been
the major person in the Amiga collection. ST PD's are mostly organized by ST
COMPUTER. Most of our ST PD's tend towards accessories and utilities, with some
large applications programs in odd areas. Of course, all machines have a
great number of games.
Running a PD Library:
In July, 1986, there were for the ST about nine PD's world wide. By February,
87, there were 30 disks. February 1988 has over 400 ST PD's, it is getting out
of hand; many services offer over 300 disks. Of course, much of it is
garbage (like pictures of christmas trees). But it is growing.
How to get PD's:
The small ads sections in magazines give address of services which send
you lists and disks costing 3 to 10 dollars. ST-COMPUTER in West Germany
(ST-Computer, Schwalbacherstrasse 64, 6236 Eschborn, West Germany) has
supported and developed largest original collection of ST PD's. They offer
them for about 3 dollars each (10 DM). An updated list appears in every
issue of the magazine.
Advice for buying from the small ads "commercial" services: send them a small
first order, one or two disks. See how long it takes to respond. A good service
already has copies made. Paying a bit more is better than waiting five or six
weeks.
Ask your local store. Stores are buying PD's and making them available on
their harddisks for copying; if you copy yourself, it can be very cheap (one
dollar or so). In Denmark; New World in Aarhus has PDs available; ECL of
Flensborg, BRD, also has a complete PD collection.
Join our User Group. We have a library of disks which we bought in common.
Members can loan the disks and copy those for free. We have one of the largest
collections available. If you want to start a user group library, we will
loan the entire set to you.
Be careful about "commercial" user groups: you pay 35$ for the priviledge of
buying disks from them for 10$ each.
User Groups with BBS's (Bulletin Board Services) put PD's on a harddisk to
which you can access with your modem. Programs can be downloaded (copied), free
to members. Comments and discussions of the programs can be gotten as well. Our
BBS has the best of the ST PD's on line (68000 BBS in Denmark: 06/109777;
24 hours, 300/1200/2400 Baud.)
Form your own group. Meet a couple of users, put your money together, buy
your own disks and start your own collection.
End of Chapter Ten: PUBLIC DOMAIN DISKS
====================== * * ======================
