[ql-users] Tandata Modem Stack
In-Reply-To: 008901c1fdab$ff53c700$2701a8c0@pc119 Should there be a surge in demand for Tandata stacks, I have one available for pp. Been sitting on a shelf for years because I can't bring myself to junk it!! Christopher Cave
Re: [ql-users] Source Code
I detect from the tone of your response that you are a bit cheesed off with Richard's comments on the proposed licence. I missed out on some of this because I have been trying a new spam rejection program which was harder to configure than I thought so I apologise if some of my comments are slightly off. I think that he has some valid points which you don't seem to have understood. Think of it this way: Richard has done a good job with UQLX and has it working on may flavours of Unix, on different platforms and processors. It would benefit the community to SMSQ to have it supported by UQLX, and have Richard's Unixy extensions within it as he has already done for JS and Minerva. However, he does not have continous access to all those platforms, and definitely not all the combinations of interface cards, displays etc they come with. He therefore cannot guarantee support, or to fix problems. He helps where he can, and in the spirit of GNU etc, he makes the information available so that technically advanced users can help themselves. This is surely not a problem because the technically advanced can have the source code and do the fixes, pass these back to Richard and he can get them into an 'official' UQLX SMSQ/E. Under the current proposed licence, he cannot operate in this reasonable way. He cannot merely do his best, but he has to give an open-ended commitment to provide support -something that few if any software vendors would do. Only in the PC world. In practice most of the QL authors have, in the past, given pretty much open ended support. Bugs and problems get reported either to the authors or to the vendors and get passed on and, where possible, fixed. Marcel, in particular, has been pretty tireless in this area. There will be some insurmountable problems with some hardware but that is unavoidable, even on the best platforms. The problem of the many different flavours of both UNIX and LINUX is one of the things that this licence is setting out to try to avoid. He isn't even allowed to provide effective support -emailing patches, assistance over the phone of how to hack a config file outlawed by the proposed licence. Patches and hacks always confuse the issue and, given the complex nature of SMSQ/E a patch here may destroy something else there (This happened several times to TT himself so I should imagine it would be worse for someone who is not the original author). We want coherent and uniform versions of SMSQ/E not hacked and patched ones. Of course this may not matter if the patches and hacks are confined to UQLX but this is an opening for the 'if they can do why can't I?' This is not the way to encourage the few souls who are both willing and capable of making SMSQ available and useful to a wider audience to harness their talents to our mutual benefit. WE are only asking for discipline I think. I really do urge you to rethink this. Conversely, I would be interested to know how you intend to police the licence; it seems to me to be impossible, so perhaps Richard and others like him need not worry. There is also nothing to stop you copying the whole of the commercial library of QL programs and handing that out for free to. If you want to steal this is your conscience. p.s. Most unix distributions include an emulators package these days. Think how many extra users we might end up with (or ex-users that return) if we could get them to add UQLX +SMSQ etc into that package? A little matter of the fee to TT. I have no problem with running Q Branch for free, for instance, if my garage will give me petrol for nothing, the post office gives me stamps for nothing and you all come round to my house with food and drink when I am hungry and thirsty. Until this time I think you should pay the people whose services and goods you use and who ask for payment and thank politely those who are giving it all for free. I have nothing against free software and open licences but you cannot expect it as a right. -- Roy Wood Q Branch, 20 Locks Hill Portslade. Sussex. BN41 2LB. UK Tel : +44 (0)1273 386030 Fax : +44 (0)1273 430501 (New number!) Mobile +44(0)7836 745501 Web : www.qbranch.demon.co.uk
Re: [ql-users] Source Code
As requested by Wolfgang Lenerz, I visit ql-users for a statement about the SMSQ/E license. The past: 1. SMSQ/E was simply a commercial product from commercial work. It was developed and supported by Tony Tebby for native 68k hardware platforms, e.g. GoldCard, QXL, SuperGoldCard, Q40, Q60. My part in financing was for the development of the Q40 specific things including highcolor. I haven't gained rights over SMSQ/E, nor did I expect that. It is true that Tony did not implement everything completely, e.g. he promised the code would be free from non-68060 instructions, but I do *not* criticise Tony therefore. Overall I am very happy with all the efforts Tony put into Q40 SMSQ/E!!! Fine. (Richard Zidlicky was wrong here IMO.) 2. Tony Tebby effectively stopped working and agreed in principle to make SMSQ/E Open Source. He would even do that without getting money. This is very generous. Wolfgang Lenerz started to take care of this. Thanks to both. Fine. 3. An official statement about the SMSQ/E license was published (e.g. in QL Today). The contents was agreed upon in the absence of Tony Tebby, me, and DD Systems. It had several strange passages, but it did not forbid distribution of executables for free. This made sure that contributions from non-commercial authors can not get lost or abused. So at least the most important condition for non-commercial work seemed to be given. Resellers would get financial reward for their support. License oddities seemed to be in the process of being straightened out. Thinks still looked hopeful. Now: 4. Distribution of SMSQ/E executables for free was forbidden. This changes everything. It shows other passages of the license in a different light. The combination now means, that non-commercial contributors no longer get any rights from this license, except the revocable right to see a vanishing snapshot of the code (***). A purely commercial license, with precautions to also use (or throw away) non-commercial work for unlimited commercial purposes of others. What does this mean *practically* ? This is tailormade for a commercial developer, who has separate agreements with the appointed resellers. There seems to be one single commercial developer in the QL world who might need this license. (Personally I don't think he really does, because he's got a well selling emulator product.) Except this one person I don't know *any* system developer in the QL world who *needs* this license! But several developers who reject it. The situation for Q40/Q60 SMSQ/E: Tony Tebby was our only *commercial* developer. Tony Tebby worked for a wide variety of native 68k hardware. If Tony Tebby is replaced by a person mainly working for his commercial Windows emulator, this doesn't help us much. With Tony Tebby gone, Q40/Q60 SMSQ/E depends strongly on the work of non-commercial authors!!! These non-commercial authors would like to participate in development! For example, there are developers interested to implement 128 MB RAM support, harddisk improvements (4 GB), slaveblock solution, cache handling, better MMU usage, network support, 68k FPU support for SMSQ/E and so on. The ONLY REASON why they can NOT do do the work for SMSQ/E is this license, which locks them out. For the development of Q40/Q60 SMSQ/E this license is a DISASTER. (For hardware development for SMSQ/E it is a disaster as well.) Bye, Peter (***) Reasons why non-commercial contributors don't get any rights from this license, except the revocable right to see a vanishing snapshot of the code: If a contribution is accepted by the registrar, the license leaves completely open what will happen to the executable code of a contribution. All this can legally happen with your executable under the license (if the license itself is legal at all in your country): 1. It may be completely lost if the AR's (appointed resellers) simply don't sell it. 2. It may be lost for a specific platform only, if the AR's exclude a platform. 3. It may be sold so expensive only few will buy it anymore. 4. It may be sold expensive for a specific platform only. 5. It may be coupled with closed-source commercial code and later not be available without that code. 6. It may become expensive later on, because of commercial code added for completily different purposes. 7. It may be sold for unexpected commercial purposes outside the QL world. 8. It may be lost if one single AR gives up his work. All this also makes the rights concerning test versions completely void. Your executable code may be lost or abused, as soon as it is accepted. The license leaves *availability* out of the control of the registrar and puts it exclusively into the hands of AR's driven by commercial needs. (That's normal for commercial work, but not for non-commercial work.) So a non-commercial developer, even if he is willing that his *free* work is *only* sold, must always look around for an AR he can completely trust, and
Re: [ql-users] Minerva manual online?
On Thu, May 16, 2002 at 05:43:25PM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have a couple of spare manuals here (printed format) - sorry, don't know if there is a version on a website anywhere.. thanks, I have forwarded the information. Richard
Re: [ql-users] Source Code
On Fri, May 17, 2002 at 09:18:24AM +0200, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 16 May 2002, at 13:28, Richard Zidlicky wrote: can you say me how exactly the license requires the resellers to provide support? In our private discussion you went to great lengths to ensure me how they are required to provide support but I can't find absolutely nothing specific about it in this license. Specifically you have promised me that the resellers will be required to fix bugs and hire people for it if they can't do it themselves. I don't comment private correspondence. so don't comment private correspondence and answer the questions. Previously you asked me to voice my concerns publicaly so what do you actually want? Lets call things by name. It is not a license but a non-disclosure agreement - why you insist calling it licence is beyound me. You would probably save yourself and others lots of trouble if you would look at some proper commercial NDA. Usually a license would give me some rights, this strange elaborate only gives me the revocable right to read the code. Which you hadn't before. I could read the disassembly before you had the idea that this is illegal. It is also worth noting that the license is subject to change anytime without giving anyone even the slightest guarantees what the next license will look like. As are all licences. nonsense. Some licenses state a minimal set of rights that can't be revoked. Other contain enough guarantees regarding fair use of the code that I won't care if some future version of the license would turn into Microsoft shared source license. Your license doesn't qualify either way. This means that anyone who will want to do something with SMSQ will have to seek separate agreements with all other copyright holders, not a pretty situation. The license says the code is copyright TT. This a void claim which only describes the current state. The license is designed to taint SMSQ by 3d party code. There is absolutely no protection against patent traps, the possibility to include code without publicaly available source invites all sorts of copyright trouble and there is also the separate agreements I have mentioned above. The license doesn't say it, but from personal emails with Wolfgang I conclude that there are people who want to write code for SMSQ in exchange for future royalty payments. thanks for clarifying all this. There is nothing evil about commercial software development but we have a few problems here. There is no choice for the users and other developpers whether they want this 3d party commercial code. Rubbish. You can always refuse to buy an upgrade if you don't want it. not if it comes bundled with important bugfixes. Do you want to maintain bugfix releases of old versions? A bigger problem here is that some of the developers who want to write SMSQ code for commercial interests also decide about the license, basically this license is their work. For me this is an unfortunate combination, it is a guarantee that SMSQ will never be even close to opensource. Right - so the situation until now was very inconvenient because TT, who wrote SMSQ/E also wrote the licence? the situation was inconvenient because TT had limited resources. You are on the best way to waste even more resources by the means of licensing braindamage. The license wasn't a big concern as long as all code was copyright TT, now that you are going to get bogged down by a variety of separate licensing agreements it is a very big concern. Philosophically this is a very interesting concept: People who would like to contribute for free do not even get the right to use their contribution, those who will contribute commercially and seek separate agreements will also receive a share in the decissionmaking of the copyright/licensing as a reward. There is no difference between the free and non free developper - all go throught the registrar and are included in the code, or not, as the case may be. of course, there is only the difference between those who have a special agreement with the registrar and those fools who haven't. I know that you are highly cooperative wrt special agreements but do you think this is a good thing for SMSQ? Seriously, what is the license worth if everyone will have his special agreement? Interestingly, not all legitimate commercial interests are served equally humbly here. When Peter Graf tried to acquire the right to give away (for free) SMSQ-Q40 binaries in exchange for a substantial payment to TT he was turned down (not because he offered too little money btw). This means that Peter has no means to ensure that SMSQ will be available for the Q40/Q60 in the future - and that after having invested horrendeous amounts of money into SMSQ development for functionality that
Re: [ql-users] Source Code
On Sat, May 18, 2002 at 10:39:29AM +0100, Roy Wood wrote: I detect from the tone of your response that you are a bit cheesed off with Richard's comments on the proposed licence. I missed out on some of this because I have been trying a new spam rejection program which was harder to configure than I thought so I apologise if some of my comments are slightly off. I think that he has some valid points which you don't seem to have understood. Think of it this way: Richard has done a good job with UQLX and has it working on may flavours of Unix, on different platforms and processors. It would benefit the community to SMSQ to have it supported by UQLX, and have Richard's Unixy extensions within it as he has already done for JS and Minerva. However, he does not have continous access to all those platforms, and definitely not all the combinations of interface cards, displays etc they come with. He therefore cannot guarantee support, or to fix problems. He helps where he can, and in the spirit of GNU etc, he makes the information available so that technically advanced users can help themselves. This is surely not a problem because the technically advanced can have the source code and do the fixes, pass these back to Richard and he can get them into an 'official' UQLX SMSQ/E. that is the optimist view. However there is nothing in the license that would guarantee me that the source code would be continuously available in the future. There is nothing in the license that would guarantee me any of my changes will get back into official SMSQ. There is nothing in the license to guarantee me that official or inofficial binaries of SMSQ will be available. Under the current proposed licence, he cannot operate in this reasonable way. He cannot merely do his best, but he has to give an open-ended commitment to provide support -something that few if any software vendors would do. Only in the PC world. In practice most of the QL authors have, in the past, given pretty much open ended support. Bugs and problems get reported either to the authors or to the vendors and get passed on and, where possible, fixed. Marcel, in particular, has been pretty tireless in this area. There will be some insurmountable problems with some hardware but that is unavoidable, even on the best platforms. The problem of the many different flavours of both UNIX and LINUX is one of the things that this licence is setting out to try to avoid. He isn't even allowed to provide effective support -emailing patches, assistance over the phone of how to hack a config file outlawed by the proposed licence. Patches and hacks always confuse the issue and, given the complex nature of SMSQ/E a patch here may destroy something else there (This happened several times to TT himself so I should imagine it would be worse for someone who is not the original author). We want coherent and uniform versions of SMSQ/E not hacked and patched ones. Of course this may not matter if the patches and hacks are confined to UQLX but this is an opening for the 'if they can do why can't I?' things will not get better if there isn't any official version for some platform and people will try to compile their binaries from sourcecode.. perhaps sourcecode they received snail-mailed from whomever I don't know with an unknown set of hacks. This is not the way to encourage the few souls who are both willing and capable of making SMSQ available and useful to a wider audience to harness their talents to our mutual benefit. WE are only asking for discipline I think. than the license is very badly engineered. It enforces discipline by rather brute methods that will only hurt people who would like to help and leaves too many important points wide open. I have proposed alternatives to Wolfgang, something like this: you are allowed to do anything with this code as long as - you accept this copyright - you leave this copyright message intact and don't place any additional restrictions on the code - you don't sell this source or anything derived from this source, including binaries - you don't branch the code. licensing for commercial purposes is available under following conditions: ... ... If discipline is all you want than this should do quite well and still leave sufficient room for commercial development. The formulation above may seem a bit naive - it is. We aren't expecting to deal with criminals here, are we? Richard
[ql-users] Job control
Is there any easy way to retrieve the job-id and to focus on it (as does Qpac PICK tool) from a SBasic program ? This is to achieve an interaction between task. Claude
Re: [ql-users] Source Code
This is surely not a problem because the technically advanced can have the source code and do the fixes, pass these back to Richard and he can get them into an 'official' UQLX SMSQ/E. that is the optimist view. However there is nothing in the license that would guarantee me that the source code would be continuously available in the future. There is nothing in the license that would guarantee me any of my changes will get back into official SMSQ. There is nothing in the license to guarantee me that official or inofficial binaries of SMSQ will be available. There is also nothing in the licence that will guarantee that you will not be run over by a bus - stop being silly. All of this continual bickering and hair splitting is getting needlessly introspective -- Roy Wood Q Branch, 20 Locks Hill Portslade. Sussex. BN41 2LB. UK Tel : +44 (0)1273 386030 Fax : +44 (0)1273 430501 (New number!) Mobile +44(0)7836 745501 Web : www.qbranch.demon.co.uk
Re: [ql-developers] Re: [ql-users] Source Code
Interestingly, not all legitimate commercial interests are served equally humbly here. When Peter Graf tried to acquire the right to give away (for free) SMSQ-Q40 binaries in exchange for a substantial payment to TT he was turned down (not because he offered too little money btw). This means that Peter has no means to ensure that SMSQ will be available for the Q40/Q60 in the future - and that after having invested horrendeous amounts of money into SMSQ development for functionality that isn't even implemented until today. This line of argument is spurious. SMSQ/E for the Q40/Q60 will continue to exist and Peter or you have the right to apply to become an official reseller. Your only commitment in this regard is that you offer support for the versions you sell and you pay the licence fee for the copies you sell. You can sell them at cost if you want that is up to you. I will not be selling Q40/Q60 SMSQ/E and neither will Jochen so the ball is in your court. Does he also have a good case to actually get the features implemented? Peter might have respondend himself would you have kept the cc ql-developpers (I am adding it again). He could also have replied had he not behaved like a teenager and stormed out this group. This fragmentation is stupid and childish. Ususally I would not hold *you* responsible for this as Peter and me would do the few fixes myself, however your license does make it impossible for a few people to support SMSQ so you should see how you want to fill the holes. Your license also leaves the question of availablity for specific platforms completely unresolved, hence my concern about Q40/Q60 SMSQ availability. Is that too much asked? You can also try to convince me with a different license. Again apply to be a =n official reseller and follow the rules. Give it away for free if you want but pay TT for each one sold. It is that simple. -- Roy Wood Q Branch, 20 Locks Hill Portslade. Sussex. BN41 2LB. UK Tel : +44 (0)1273 386030 Fax : +44 (0)1273 430501 (New number!) Mobile +44(0)7836 745501 Web : www.qbranch.demon.co.uk
Re: [ql-users] Source Code
I've glanced over the comments made by others on the SMSQ/E official statement and have decided to take a nice long look at the statement myself. The comments below are strictly my opinion, not based on any input from the other commentors. At 02:50 PM 5/13/2002 +0200, you wrote: Official statement == 3/ No distribution of SMSQ/E may be SOLD, except for the official distribution. This interdiction includes that of including and distributing SMSQ/E in Public domain libraries. Official distributions will be sold in compiled (binary) form, possibly together with the official distribution as source code. For such sales, for the time being, two distributors/resellers, namely Jochen MERZ (JMS) and Roy WOOD (QBRANCH) have been appointed by the copyright holder. Resellers provide support for the versions sold by them. Except by prior agreement, binary, i.e. compiled, versions of SMSQ/E may not be distributed other than through the distributors. It would be better to leave out stating who the official distributors are in this Official Statement, and put it in a separate document. It would be kind of like putting in the name of the Officers in a set of By-Laws, as the names will change over time, and the By-Laws probably will not. 4/ The registrar, i.e. me, will maintain official distributions of SMSQ/E, in binary and source code form, one for each machine on which SMSQ/E may run. I would recommend defining the terms Registrar (but not as me) and Distributor/Reseller. Just to fully clarify who they are and what they do. 5/ Any person may make any changes/additions/modifications/adaptions to the source code he feels like. Any person may give away to others the modification he thus made, including the official distribution in source code form only, provided this is made ENTIRELY FOR FREE - no charges, not even copying charges, or charges for the media on which this is distributed, may be levied. I understand the total avoidance of any one making money off of the source code for SMSQ/E, but I feel not allowing charges for media a bit strict. A simple workaround would be to send the person a blank CD or other disk and some IRC's. I am assuming that IRC's are not considered a form of currency. If your local Post Office does not know that an IRC is, then talk directly to the Post Master for that Office. There is no reason for a Postal Employee to not know their job. I spent 8.5 years as a federal employee, so I know the power of the chain of command. This distribution of the source code including the changes/additions/modifications/adaptions made by any author may not be made in electronic form other than on a physical disk. I really don't understand not allowing distribution via anything other than sneaker-net. What would be the consequences of the Registrar, putting the Official Distribution Source Code of SMSQ/E on a web server? It could be arranged that the requester must give their name and address before getting the Source Code. As someone that is about 5,000 miles from the Registrar, mail can take an awfully long time. Plus, someone like Thierry, sitting on a French Naval ship in the Persian Gulf, mail is very slow to come. As a veteran I try to keep fellow service members in mind. Distribution of the changes/additions may be in binary(compiled) form, provided that the original and/or official version of SMSQ/E, which is copyright © T.Tebby, is not distributed in binary form as well. With all due respect, I don't think the above is physically possible. If I make a change to the SMSQ/E scheduler, I don't think that I can compile it and distribute it without including SMSQ/E (since this is what I have changed). If I can make a change and distribute it without any original SMSQ/E code, then I'm not actually modifying SMSQ/E and don't fall under this license. I think this statement needs to be looked at again. 1/ When a new author adds some code to make SMSQ/E better, only the resellers (and Tony Tebby) see some profit from it. Before I comment on this statement let me first say this: If the Emperor has no clothes, I'll be the first one to say that he does not. I hope all understand what I mean. Also, I hope no ones take offense at my asking the following question, as I am not trying to offend, but ask a question that I feel is pertinent and important. So, the above statement says that only TT and the Distributors/Resellers will see profit from SMSQ/E. A further statement says the resellers provide support when selling the binary versions, hence they should get some money. I've spend 5 years doing technical support for a living. Most companies define traditional support as meaning that if the product has a problem (like a bug), then the company is obligated to fix the bug (most of the time), else the buyer is getting no benefit for his dollars (and the support contract may be invalidated). In the case of SMSQ/E, if there is a
Re: [ql-developers] Re: [ql-users] Source Code
Timothy, When I got SMSQ/E from Jochen, I got: a) A generic SMSQ/E User Guide (38 pages) that was not machine specific b) Custom supplement pages for each hardware environment I bought (typically 6-10 pages) I agree that the SMSQ/E Reference manual is extra - but I do not think that is what was being refrred to. Dave - Original Message - From: Timothy Swenson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, May 19, 2002 4:59 AM Subject: Re: [ql-developers] Re: [ql-users] Source Code At 01:43 AM 5/19/2002 +0100, Roy Wood wrote: What rights are they ? As I have said we have no objections to you becoming an official reseller if you follow the rules. In fact we would be glad if you did because we have no wish to be involved with support for the Q40/Q60. As an official reseller you can sell SMSQ/E for whatever you want provided you pay the fee to TT, provide a printed manual, disk and support for the platforms that you sell.It really is that simple. Printed Manual When I got SMSQ/E I did not get a full printed manual. I got a hardware guide and a very short guide to SMSQ/E for the Q40 (bought mine 2 years ago). The Reference Manual was extra. If I had not know much about QDOS and SMSQ/E when I got the Q40, the manual would not have kept me from being SOL. The Gold Card manual was much more in depth than the SMSQ/E manual I got. Tim Swenson
