From: ianj@ijpc.UUCP (Ian Justman)
Newsgroups: comp.bbs.waffle
Subject: Re: Waffle File Server
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 92 22:30:16 PDT
Organization: Ian Justman's pitiful excuse for an AT clone

vince@halcyon.com (Vince Skahan) writes:

> 
> In comp.bbs.waffle you write:
> 
> >vince@halcyon.com (Vince Skahan) writes:
> 

<not-so-witty barb from Larry Hardiman deleted>

> It's the license terms (and what I read as implied threats and potential
> boobytraps) in the new version that I complained about and resolved in my
> particular case (as a potential customer) by voting with my wallet and not 
> agreeing to the (IMHO) simply incredible wording of the license agreement.

Vince, just for grins, could you please post the offending
section?  If nothing else, it would give some of us a good
chuckle.

And what kind of booby traps do the docs imply?  When I wrote my
package, I warned of potential pitfalls when installing PCElm
which at times did some damage to some accounting information on
my drive, but the damage was very minor, and probably wasn't
intentional.  But I certainly would not go out of my way to write
code that would deliberately and with malice aforethought do
wanton destruction on someone's system.

Larry, if you want to be a marketing genius, take this simple
piece of advice very much to your heart.

After hearing about the threatening nature of your licensing
terms, you scared me off as a potential customer.

And if you did indeed put code in your program that would do
damage if your program wasn't being used the way you wanted it to
be used, I don't care if you disclaim any responsiblity, but that
kind of programming could be construed as a virus because the
destruction was deliberate and with malice aforethought.  Mind
you, I'm not accusing you of writing another virus, but I am
giving you a VERY stern warning.

> You may choose to word your license stuff any way you wish just as I may
> choose to go elsewhere.  No problem for me.

Nor me.

> >Let the world also know that you never registered your use of WFS,
> >nor paid the paltry registration fee either. I can imagine that you
> >have not bothered to reward the author of VMS112 either.
> 
> You are correct that I never registered WFS.  My messing around with it
> to see how/if it works, if my site could handle the load, if my feed site
> was going to complain, etc. didn't seem to make it worthwhile to me at the ti
> 
> I also ran ASER for quite some time for the same tests.
> I have fired VMS up for testing and think it's also ok and indeed may be more
> powerful for what I want to accomplish.
> 
> If I decide to keep the fileserver up under DOS for 'real' (which is still a
> very open question), I'll register whatever product I use if I can deal with
> the implications of agreeing to the wording of the license terms.

Larry, boy, what Mr. Skahan said is the entire philosophy of
shareware, lock, stock, and barrel.  We need to be able to make
sure beyond a shadow of a doubt (which evidently your software
doesn't have the ability to do according to Mathew of Mantis with
whom I agree wholeheartedly) whether the software will satisfy
our needs.  I will be registering VMS soon.  I'm sorry, none of
my money, as I hope others', has your name on it, Larry.

The gist of our messages is this:  GET A CLUE!

> I can't deal with the terms of your product, so I'm walking...

Nor can I for that matter.  I'm not walking; I'm RUNNING!

> Good luck selling your fine products...

And he's gonna need it with scare tactics and potential
booby-traps that would make a virus-writer not even need to
infect this program!  If such is the case, then this program IS a
virus!