[sebhc] DISKETTE IMAGES

[Glenn Roberts]

>From the earliest days copyright has been about protecting the ability of an 
author to financially gain from his/her work

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright#Prehistory_of_copyright

The days of Microsoft deriving any monetary income from CP/M Cobol are long 
gone. The real test would seem to be: are you denying them a sale? Since the 
product has been off the market for 25 years it seems unlikely!

It's hard believe that Microsoft would care about such a posting, and at any 
rate the stated policy of the sebhc web site is to remove material if a 
legitimate copyright owner comes forward and requests such action. 
Ironically much of this "antique" software is in danger of being lost 
forever - it is largely through the efforts of groups like this one that it 
is being rescued from bit rot! The single biggest impediment to this 
preservation process is the unfounded fear of somehow violating the rights 
of vendors who have long ago stopped marketing these programs (and in most 
cases long ago gone out of business!)

There are some enlightened souls out there who have tried to help. Dan 
Bricklin has made the original Visicalc available 
(http://danbricklin.com/visicalc.htm), Borland has posted its old Turbo 
C/Pascal products (http://bdn.borland.com/museum), and Cladera made the 
source code for CP/M available 
(http://www.retroarchive.org/cpm/archive/unofficial/source.html), among 
others.

Anyone want to write to Microsoft and suggest they stand up a museum of 
antique software site on the microsoft.com home page?


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Loguidice" <bill at armchairarcade.com>
To: <sebhc at sebhc.org>
Sent: Friday, July 21, 2006 4:43 PM
Subject: RE: [sebhc] DISKETTE IMAGES


> I'd have to disagree about being wary of posting the images, even though
> they're originally from Microsoft.  While certainly it would be a sore 
> point
> and a no-no if it were something even remotely modern, there is countless
> classic Microsoft software on the Web freely available for a variety of
> platforms.  While that doesn't make it right, the point is is that I'm not
> aware of a single case where Microsoft has taken any action against these
> sites or individuals.  If Microsoft and images for "mainstream" systems of
> the past from the likes of Commodore, TI and Atari didn't raise an 
> eyebrow,
> why would something like that in HDOS format, since that's about as niche 
> as
> one could get?  Again, it doesn't make it right, but sometimes we have to
> make hard decisions when it comes to archiving truly "obsolete" software
> that will never have value again to the original copyright holder.
>
> ======================================
> Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
> Armchair Arcade, Inc.
> (A PC Magazine Top 100 Website)
> ======================================
> http://www.armchairarcade.com
>
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: sebhc-bounces at sebhc.org
>> [mailto:sebhc-bounces at sebhc.org] On Behalf Of Barry Watzman
>> Sent: Friday, July 21, 2006 4:29 PM
>> To: sebhc at sebhc.org
>> Subject: RE: [sebhc] DISKETTE IMAGES
>>
>>
>> However, I'd be far more cautious about posting these than I
>> would be with
>> most other software from that era.  It goes without saying
>> that Microsoft
>> still very much exists and might object to the software being posted.
>
> --
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> 


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