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Date:Mon Mar 24 21:42:29 1993 
Subject:sources (was Re: VEDFILESELECT waits too long for my taste) 
From:Aaron Sloman 
Volume-ID:930324.04 

> sfk@otter.hpl.hp.com (Steve Knight) wrote previously

> > This unfortunately means that I can't justify paying much money for the
> > sources.  Presumably ISL would be very reluctant to release sources without
> > mucho moola exchanging hands

Actually that's not the problem now (as I understand it). Rather
there's

(a) a fear that some users on maintenance will copy some system
procedures, produce modified versions, then later one day run into
obscure bugs, which will case the support staff extra work.

(b) a fear that some users will start relying on undocumented
features of the implementation and then get themselves into trouble
when the implementation changes.

My suspicion is that both of these problems can be overcome by
suitable rewording of the licence agreement. Or, they could be in
compressed form in $usepop/pop/src with Readme file saying that the
files are not to be uncompressed or read via zcat etc unless the
customer agrees that the supplier is not obliged to provide any help
relating to software that makes any use of procedures or
datastructures defined in any of the uncompressed files ...... etc.

People not on maintenance will happily read the sources.

People who are on maintenance will then have to think *very*
carefully about the contractual risks involved in letting their
staff have access to the sources! Certain commercial customers would
not dare.

Aaron
---
-- 
Aaron Sloman,
School of Computer Science, The University of Birmingham, B15 2TT, England
EMAIL   A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk  OR A.Sloman@bham.ac.uk
Phone: +44-(0)21-414-3711       Fax:   +44-(0)21-414-4281