Walnut Creek makes several CD-ROMs. The majority of them are
collections of freeware or shareware. I doubt they contacted
the authors of these programs for permission to distribute them
on CD-ROM.
Some of the programs may have licenses that permit CD-ROM producers
to place their software on the CD-ROMs, but I think such explicit
licenses are rare.
Now, I'll agree that Walnut Creek could handle this better
and that technically they are in violation of copyright law
(law which was drafted without FAQs or CD-ROMs being considered,
I'm sure), but why are FAQ maintainers making such a big deal of
it when software writers aren't? Well, maybe they are and I'm
just not aware of it, though I doubt it.
Shouldn't Walnut Creek (and other CD-ROM producers) contact the
author of every software program they include on, say, a
"Linux CD-ROM", before stamping them? Why aren't there complaints
plastered across comp.os.linux.development, gnu.misc.discuss, or
wherever else?
Perhaps, because it's a useful service to provide the software in
such a convenient way, even though the CD-ROM maker is making a
profit at it? Couldn't it also be useful for some people to
have news.answers mounted from a CD-ROM?
Writing FAQs takes time and effort, so does good software (free
or otherwise). FAQs can change fairly often, but so can software
- the Linux kernel gets new patches more often than I update my
FAQ. So where's the difference?
-- Joe V. Moss | Hm: joe@italia.rain.com Wk: joe@morton.rain.com Morton & Associates |-------------------------------------------------- 7478 S.W. Coho Ct. | label .l -text "Insert cute quote here" Tualatin, OR 97062 | button .b -text "OK" -command exit; pack .l .b
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