Dear Walnut Creek:
You should know that there is a THIRD group of us here at faq-maintainers
whose point of view has not yet been adequately represented. Call us...
the Apathetic Majority.
We basically think what you're doing is wrong, and you really should try
harder to get proper permissions, but we don't see the point of making a
federal case out of it. Of all the Internet commercialization attempts
now in progress, the for-profit inexpensive redistribution of FAQ's is
way, way down on our view-with-alarm list. Some of us think it's about
like parking in a handicapped space, but others of insist it's more like
smoking a cigarette on the subway. (They will be filing a minority report
shortly).
You should be aware that what you're doing really, really does upset some
people, though. And we'd think they're people you'd want on your side.
It's funny... I bet Eric S. Raymond and Walnut Creek are far, far closer
in their beliefs, values and feelings about the Internet than either of them
is to Rupert Murdoch or Bill Gates or what's-his-name-president-of-AOL?
Case? Steve Case? The bitterest controversy always seems to occur between
people/groups with _slightly_ differing views.
Meanwhile, hey, I've been a little sloppy in some of the things _I've_ done.
When I wrote my FAQ I asked _most_ of the people I quoted for permission,
but, gee, I'm not sure I got _all_ of them, and I don't have a sheet with
the date of the inquiry and the reply and how I knew the reply was really
from them, and one of the guys is a friend of mine and after he'd given
me permission twice I thought I could probably just go ahead and include
the third one, and the FAQ has been up there for months and he hasn't
squawked so it's probably OK... And just the other day I quoted an item
from ComputerWorld in comp.lang.mumps and it was a really, really short item
but I _did_ quote it in full and I tell myself it's probably covered under
fair use but I know that really it probably isn't... And I bought my daughter
a boom box with a high-speed dubbing feature even though I _know_ she's going
to use it to copy copyrighted cassettes... and I loaned my copy of MYST to
a friend over the weekend and I didn't check to make sure the license really
allows that...
Daniel P. B. Smith
dpbsmith@world.std.com
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