DOS ain't dead - may I publish fixes to utilities such as PC Magazine's ?

may I publish fixes to utilities such as PC Magazine's ? (Developers)

posted by Arjay, 21.05.2011, 09:14

> I don't know the status of Ziff Davis, and I'm no lawyer. I know they
> forbid redistribution since a long time (re:
> Garbo).
Correct.

> I'm sure Arjay knows more about this.
Not a great deal more beyond what I vaguely remember from Ziff Davis's legal follow ups as at time I was running a legal BBS but had copies of the simtel archive locally (Walnut creek CD-ROM's). I was never approached by them but there was a lot of chatter on Simtel/over the BBS's at the time about it.

> Anyways, I think they actually used to sell (a
> year or two ago) it online still as a subscription or bundle. Yeah, maybe
> I'm remembering wrong, can't remember the URL, who knows.
Unfortunately you are remembering this all correctly, e.g: please see the over zealous boiler plate on PC Mag's subscription page for the 22 year old ANSI.COM.

Some further background here and here based on my own understanding of the removal requests from my BBS days. See also
Curtiss Priest's excellent Buried software utilities in Simtel and 'pcmag' archives the top of which touches on their leaking onto the "net" but importantly is also an informed well written/structured document on the utils.

Fortunately there are some sensible authors/writers who were connected with PC Magazine, e.g. Ethan Winer's Ethan Winer's page will be of interest for basic/asm programmers.

> In any case, you're probably only safe NOT publishing binaries but instead
> binary patches (debug scripts) and/or non-context diffs, IMHO.
IANAL, however I would recommend seeing boiler plate on download link above.

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Complete thread:

may I publish fixes to utilities such as PC Magazine's ? - Ninho, 01.04.2011, 20:19 (Developers)
- may I publish fixes to utilities such as PC Magazine's ? - Laaca, 02.04.2011, 09:29
  - may I publish fixes to utilities such as PC Magazine's ? - Ninho, 02.04.2011, 10:41
    - may I publish fixes to utilities such as PC Magazine's ? - Rugxulo, 02.04.2011, 20:11
      - may I publish fixes to utilities such as PC Magazine's ? - Ninho, 02.04.2011, 23:55
        may I publish fixes to utilities such as PC Magazine's ? - Rugxulo, 03.04.2011, 01:22
        diffs to non-free source code, copyright infringement? - ecm, 03.04.2011, 01:30
        diffs to non-free source code, copyright infringement? - Ninho, 04.04.2011, 13:33
        diffs to non-free source code, copyright infringement? - Khusraw, 04.04.2011, 14:02
        diffs to non-free source code, copyright infringement? - Ninho, 04.04.2011, 17:56
        diffs to non-free source code, copyright infringement? - Khusraw, 04.04.2011, 19:28
        diffs to non-free source code, copyright infringement? - Ninho, 05.04.2011, 13:42
        diffs to non-free source code, copyright infringement? - Khusraw, 06.04.2011, 12:46
        may I publish fixes to utilities such as PC Magazine's ? - Ninho, 04.04.2011, 13:03
      - may I publish fixes to utilities such as PC Magazine's ? - Arjay, 21.05.2011, 09:14
- may I publish fixes to utilities such as PC Magazine's ? - Khusraw, 03.04.2011, 09:52
  - may I publish fixes to utilities such as PC Magazine's ? - RayeR, 04.04.2011, 00:46
    - may I publish fixes to utilities such as PC Magazine's ? - Ninho, 04.04.2011, 18:03