Re: [NTLK] Hacked WiFi driver

Speaking as someone who has written and contributed the odd piece of
software to other small communities like the Newton one, and a long
standing lurker of the list...

...and someone who managed to register the driver before it's author
went AWOL, a process which itself took weeks, and resulted in possibly
the worst after sale support for anything I have ever bought in my life...

...I personally feel that this driver is Abandonware, since the author
has clearly stated he is no longer taking money for it, has no plans to
ever take money from it, or any plans to develop it further.

You can argue all you like about the legal side of Abandonware, although
it might be a good idea if people stop confusing legality with morality
as if the two are the same thing. Whilst many aspects of the law grew
from moral codes in society, copyright certainly wasn't one of them.

But from a moral perspective, Hiroshi is clearly done with the Newton
and it's community. He doesn't care about it, and didn't for some while
before he stopped taking registrations. He has abandoned it and his
product, so I see absolutely no problem with other people hacking it.

Personally, whatever his rights are, the fact he abandoned it and then
didn't provide a fully working version and the source code for it,
grates on me as a coder.

Also confusing are people defending his right to withhold the driver,
when actually he has done no such thing. He has closed registrations, so
nobody can register it. His website is still up, but his product is
abandoned. Again, I see no problem with people hacking it to unlock the
WEP functions.

I would happily host such a crack on my website, in fact I think its a
shame that various cracks for old abandoned Newton software aren't
floating about more.

Sometimes the rights of the individual should outweigh the needs of the
community, but this isn't the case in my book. In fact its possibly the
clearest case of the needs of the community overriding those of the
individual I've seen for years, especially as that individual has
clearly stated he's abandoned his software.

Hope all of that didn't come off *too* bitter and twisted. :)

-- 
Rob
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