> This discussion on the legality of sharing manuals, PDFs, etc. leads me to t$
Personally, I'm ambivalent about it. Or, more precisely, my opinion varies depending on factors not stated in what you wrote. > I know some generous copyright owners have allowed unrestricted use > of their old software, like Roy Soltoff from Misosys, but many others > have not or have disappeared. The major cases where I consider such things acceptable are where the successors-in-interest of the original copyright holder either can't be identified or located (and I mean with a reasonable level of effort, not "oh, I did a quick Google and didn't find anyone") or demonstrate convincingly that they don't care. That last can take many forms; in roughly decreasing levels of comfort (for me), it can be a rerelease with a more liberal license, it can be a letter from the relevant department to someone like bitsavers, or it can be just continued inaction in the face of well-publicized and highly accessible copies on things like bitsavers. There is also - to me! - a difference between something like ripping off a manual and redistributing it with the "justification" of "they did it first" or "they did worse", on the one hand, or keeping a private archive of such things, to make sure the information is not actually lost for the future, on the other. /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mo...@rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
