Discontinued Software, The Law, Morals and Hypercard

Scott Kane scott at proherp.com
Mon Jan 23 04:20:07 EST 2006



> I could, at least potentially, understand somebody pirating 
> software for profit, 

Can you?  I can't.

> BUT what I cannot understand is why the 
> web seems to be full of software that has been pirated for no 
> reason at all beyond that "it is there".

We have a generation of cheats I'm afraid.  They lack the
ability of creative thinking and feel the world owes them
a living.  As it does not they are in for a rude awakening.

> And I do agree that pirating software is morally wrong. 

Absolutely.

> My "moral loophole" (dangerous terminology) is where a
> piece of software is no longer available but which is still 
> desired and required. 

That's the way of the world.  IBM doesn't sell OS2 anymore,
but it doesn't decrease their rights to it.

> Unfortunately, converting an old Hypercard stack to a RR
> one is very rarely simply a case of opening the HC stack
> with RR - were that the case nobody would have avy reason 
> whatsoever to need the Hypercard development environment.

I've not had to do that.  But having done it in other
languages by hand it never seemed to much of a problem
for me.  Right now I am converting Pascal code to Revolution -
by hand.  I'm enjoying it. Especially Rev's parsing abilities!

> It seems bloody-minded and churlish of Apple to have
> withdrawn Hypercard completely - after all, they could
> still make the odd buck here and there.

It's a matter of diminishing returns.  If you continue
supply of a dead product you have to support it.  Supporting
a product with no revenue is the same as flushing cash down
the toilet.  I can't say I blame them at all.

> There is another factor that has not been mentioned in this 
> discussion so far: that of what I would term 'legal parity' 
> across international boundaries. This can lead all sorts of 
> innocent end-users unwittingly into all sorts of traps. 

Not so with countries who are signatories of the Berne Convention.
It makes it very clear and very concise.  The only issues that
affect that convention are minor and generally assumed to be 
a given.

> For example: I recently authored a CD-ROM (using Metacard) 
> containing 60 Bulgarian literary 'themes' for 14 year-old 
> Bulgarians to prepare themselves for Grammar-school entrance 
> exams. These are copyright under Bulgarian law. However, if 
> somebody picks up a copy of my CD and goes for a day trip to 
> Turkey or Macedonia, as long as they can demonstrate that 
> they were outwith Bulgaria at that time, there is absolutely 
> no legal redress should they pirate the whole shebang and 
> market it back in Bulgaria under their label. Needless to 
> say, I have covered 25 percent of production costs so far! 
> What a business genius!

I would be most alarmed if I was you and I'd be lobbying
your government to address that via trade negotiation.
 
> The other problem is that the US is perceived (no, surely
> not?) as a bully in other parts of the world - and it may
> be in certain political and economic spheres - so, by 
> extension, a lot of US software legislation is seen as a US 
> imposition on the 'have nots': in Bulgaria pirating software 
> is a national sport and seen as a way for the "poor" 
> Bulgarians to get their own back on the US. I have discovered 
> this to my cost when advertising my "one-step program to 
> software legality"; i.e. chuck out MS Windows and MS Office 
> and install Ubuntu Linux and Open Office for the price of 
> half a week's food-shopping.

Well - I'm Australian, not American, but that
does not alter my stance.  I have spent five
years on disability pension - that's less than
the bread line.  In the last twelve months I've
spent every dollar I could on programming and
libraries to go with my new range of products.
Nobody helped me out, I had no other income and
yet I still managed to do it.  It meant I had
to trade between what I *had to have* and what
I *needed* to have.  From this point I can work
my way back up again.  I've also applied for
an I.T. grant and will be doing study to achieve
the requirements for that over the next seven
weeks.  I also got myself a US bank account so
that I could reduce my losses when it comes to
cashing foreign checks here (AU $30 a pop and 
30 day wait).  There are ways around many things.
It's a matter of being honest, doing one's homework
and doing a heck of a lot for no immediate return
for others (for example my primary website was
done for me in return for some programming work).

If more people had a "go" instead of looking to "steal"
many more people would reap rewards they hadn't imagined.

I think we are dangerously off topic now...

Scott





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