From: sherman@lea.csc.ncsu.edu (Chris Sherman)
Subject: Re: XV 3.00 has escaped!
Organization: NCSU
Lines: 45

In <123645@netnews.upenn.edu> bradley@grip.cis.upenn.edu (John Bradley) writes:

>Batten down the hatches, hide the women, and lock up the cows, XV 3.00 has
>finally escaped.  

It really bums me out that xv went shareware.

 * XV is shareware for PERSONAL USE only.  You may use XV for your own
                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^
                       What does this mean anyway?  Can I sit in a company
                       and look at pictures off the net in my spare time?

 * amusement, and if you find it nifty, useful, generally cool, or of
 * some value to you, your non-deductable donation would be greatly
 * appreciated.  $25 is the suggested donation, though, of course,
 * larger donations are quite welcome.  Folks who donate $25 or more
 * can receive a Real Nice bound copy of the XV manual for no extra
 * charge.
 *
 * Commercial, government, and institutional users MUST register their
 * copies of XV, for the exceedingly REASONABLE price of just $25 per
 * workstation/X terminal.  Site licenses are available for those who
 * wish to run XV on a large number of machines.  Contact the author
 * for more details.

Now since universities are institutions (right?), doesn't this mean that
most everyone in the world is affected by this?  (I don't believe there
are that many running X windows at home yet, relatively speaking).

Can the author legally sell xv?  Xv uses tiff and jpeg code developed
by others.  Did the author get permission to sell these works?  Did
the author also get permission from all the people who contributed to
xv to sell their work as well?

My guess is that now nobody is going to want to help the author
maintain the code anymore now that xv has become a commercial product,
and support for xv will begin to slide downhill.

If this is the case, then that's a bummer.  I really liked xv.

-- 
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    /         /     /     /   /      /     /          Chris Sherman
   /         ___   /        _/      /          /
 _____/   __/   __/   __/ _\    _____/   _____/        sherman@lea.csc.ncsu.edu
