John --
After looking at the site http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/uwin/, I find
myself very uncomfortable with your recommendation. I read your posting
(quoted at the end of this message in full) as endorsing the use of this
AT&T software in violation of its license. You wrote:
>... you can download it and use it for free for
>research, educational or evaluation purposes. I view my occasional use as
>falling into those catagories.
Which one? According to the materials at the Web site you listed:
"evaluation" is limited to a 90-day license, not "occasional use"
"educational" applies to "users at educational institutions". Even
if you are one (I wouldn't guess it from your e-mail
address), members of this list in general are not.
"research" is undefined anywhere that I can find, but I'd be
interested in seeing an explanation of how you
interpret "occasional use" as "research", particularly
the example of "occasional use" that you offer in your
message. What are you "researching"?
Free and Open Source software are good things, but in using them, we should
not slip into the notion that anything available for download is free for
all possible use, or that it is ethical either to ignore the terms of
license agreements or reinterpret their words to suit our convenience.
This package is not "free" and, in my opinion, should be used only in ways
consistent with its license ... and as I read the license, that does not
include "occasional use". I do not want to get into an extended debate, but
I do want to be clear that I am uncomfortable seeing recommendations on this
list, or on any list I participate in, to disregard the terms of license
agreements (except insofar as those terms themselves violate the law).
It is worth noting that *portions* of the package are derived from Open
Source programs and, hence, are covered by the GPL. The included version of
"gzip" is one of them, but neither "cat", "split", nor "tar" are mentioned
in that context.
People wanting honestly free Windows versions of Unix utilities might want
to start by getting the CygWin package that ports major portions of the Unix
API to Windows environments, then gathering some of the packages that have
been ported using the CygWin .dll . All of this material **is** covered by
the GPL, hence legimitately usable for "free" by anyone. I didn't see either
"cat" or "split" mentioned by name, but they may be parts of the "binutils",
"fileutils", or "shellutils" packages. (If not, here's an opportunity for a
programmer who supports Open Source to port these apps.) "tar" is mentioned
specifically as included.
Relevant URLs are:
http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/
ftp://ftp.sunsite.utk.edu/pub/cygwin/latest/
http://www.hirmke.de/software/develop/gnuwin32/cygwin/porters/Hirmke_Michael
/GNUWin32-links.html
At 09:56 AM 1/26/00 -0800, Baskette, John wrote:
>Here is a possiblity for you:
>
> http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/uwin/
>
>This is a version of the Korn shell written for windows (written by David
>Korn who wrote the original). It supports most unix commands and utilities
>including gzip, split and cat.
>
>It is not "free software," but you can download it and use it for free for
>research, educational or evaluation purposes. I view my occasional use as
>falling into those catagories.
>
>I used it recently to sneaker net some binaries I got off the net from a
>windows box I use at work. I was able to tar and gzip the files, split them
>using split, and write them to floppies. My Red Hat 6.1 distribution came
>with the mtools package. I used the mtools command mcopy to read the files
>off the floppies, then used cat to join the file pieces together.
>
>If you went this route, you would need to unzip the files and used gzip
>instead.
{prior message deleted]
------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"---
Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo
Palo Alto, CA [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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