Re: www.adahome.com?...

Re: www.adahome.com?...

[Ted Dennison]

In article <JZp26.45888$A06.1345888@news1.frmt1.sfba.home.com>,
  tmoran@acm.org wrote:

> >The maintainer of AdaHome was a rather mercenary sort. He slapped a
> >copyright on pretty much anything he touched (including his copy of
> >the LRM!).
>   Sounds more like he had an automated uploader that attached the
> copyright notice.

If you are suggesting that perhaps he had some dumb software that was
inadvertantly copyrighting stuff that was clearly inappropriate, that
documentably false. He did it knowingly and on purpose. This was
discussed in great detail back when whe participated in c.l.a., and
several times since.

If I remember correctly, his rationale for copyrighting the FAQ was
something along the lines that he wanted to prevent hostile forking of
the FAQ. However, he also took care to require his permission for just
about any commercial distribution of it. The LRM copyright seems to just
have been a crass commercial act (he offers to sell his HTML FAQ on the
site, and the licensing terms seem to be crafted to prevent you from
legally acquiring a copy any other way).

> Legally, the absence of a copyright notice wouldn't
> give permission to copy either.

True. But he copyrighted stuff that (arguably) he had no right to
copyright. For instance, most of the FAQ entires were harvested directly
off of c.l.a., with notice given to the actual authors after the fact.
The Ada LRM already *has* a copyright, with quite different (and
incompatable) licensing terms. So if he hadn't tried to copyright his
HTML source of it (I say, *tried* because its debatable how valid that
was), then the notice on the LRM copyright page which *does* allow
copying would have been in force.

--
T.E.D.

http://www.telepath.com/~dennison/Ted/TED.html


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Re: www.adahome.com?...

[Ted Dennison]

In article <J8u26.47403$A06.1375585@news1.frmt1.sfba.home.com>,
  tmoran@acm.org wrote:
> >But he copyrighted stuff that (arguably) he had no right to copyright.
>   Then he didn't copyright it, he mislabeled it.  If he did that
> with intent to defraud the actual copyright owner it's probably a
> crime as well as a tort.  Hmmm, a highly publicized case over web sites

Perhaps, but as I said, its arguable. To make matters more complicated,
he's a resident of Switzerland (I believe). Copyright laws there are
bound to be subtly different than in the US. Plus some of the Usenet
postings were made from third contries...

We tried to resolve these issues with him personally, but this is the
position he wants to take. Sure, some high-priced legal help *might* be
able to free up some of the work. But we are engineers here, not
laywers. Since no one is out any real money, the best and safest thing
to do is to just redo the work. As "Larry the Liquidator" said in Other
People's Money, "Lawyers are like H-bombs; ... using them just fucks
everything up".

--
T.E.D.

http://www.telepath.com/~dennison/Ted/TED.html


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Re: www.adahome.com?...

[Marin David Condic]

Ted Dennison wrote:

> We tried to resolve these issues with him personally, but this is the
> position he wants to take. Sure, some high-priced legal help *might* be
> able to free up some of the work. But we are engineers here, not
> laywers. Since no one is out any real money, the best and safest thing
> to do is to just redo the work. As "Larry the Liquidator" said in Other
> People's Money, "Lawyers are like H-bombs; ... using them just fucks
> everything up".

Most of the stuff on that site isn't of much value. The ARM in hypertext
and/or Postscript might have some value - but that's been duplicated
elsewhere. The FAQ is probably of some negligible value, but it can easily be
produced again. The rest is just info that exists in other places now. So
there isn't much point in arguing about copyrights.

I don't know how or why the original author of Adahome put a copyright on all
that stuff. I can't imagine how he expected to make any real money from it.
Obviously, there just isn't enough interest out there in Ada to turn a
hypertext ARM into some kind of cash cow. (Or, for that matter, probably any
other programming language.) I could imagine the copyright acting as some
kind of personal protection - take something from my web site, use it, then
try to sue me for some problem with it and my answer is: "Hey! You *stole* it
from me so how is it you have some right to sue???" Other than that, I just
don't see much value.

A site that isn't being actively maintained rather quickly becomes
irrelevant. Adahome pretty much falls into that category.

MDC
--
======================================================================
Marin David Condic - Quadrus Corporation - http://www.quadruscorp.com/
Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ q u a d r u s c o r p . c o m
Visit my web site at:  http://www.mcondic.com/

    "Giving money and power to Government is like giving whiskey
    and car keys to teenage boys."

        --   P. J. O'Rourke
======================================================================

Re: www.adahome.com?...

[Wes Groleau]

> A site that isn't being actively maintained rather quickly becomes
> irrelevant. Adahome pretty much falls into that category.

A site that isn't being actively maintained
rather quickly becomes _wrong_.  And that may
be harmful in some cases.

-- 
Wes Groleau
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau

Re: www.adahome.com?...

[John English]

Ted Dennison wrote:
> If you are suggesting that perhaps he had some dumb software that was
> inadvertantly copyrighting stuff that was clearly inappropriate, that
> documentably false. He did it knowingly and on purpose. This was
> discussed in great detail back when whe participated in c.l.a., and
> several times since.
> 
> If I remember correctly, his rationale for copyrighting the FAQ was
> something along the lines that he wanted to prevent hostile forking of
> the FAQ. However, he also took care to require his permission for just
> about any commercial distribution of it. The LRM copyright seems to just
> have been a crass commercial act (he offers to sell his HTML FAQ on the
> site, and the licensing terms seem to be crafted to prevent you from
> legally acquiring a copy any other way).

Hmm. Having asked Marcus for permission to redistribute the FAQs (and
receiving this without any quibbles), and then having spoken via email
and finally meeting him F2F at Ada Europe some years back, I'm inclined
to be dubious about any implied mercenary motives. Marcus did a valuable
job with Adahome (formerly HBAP) at a time when there was no comparable
web presence for Ada, and I feel that he deserves congratulating for
providing this (as does David for Adapower, which is indeed a worthy
successor to Adahome/HBAP).

Copyright is tricky, and IMHO if one isn't a lawyer it is much safer to
plaster daunting legalese on everything just in case an American gets on
a high horse and sues for an arm and a leg (I like mixing metaphors!).
I plaster thusly myself, and as far as I'm concerned it's a matter of
incanting magic spells (like some of my students incant "with
Ada.Text_IO;
use Ada.Text_IO;" at the start of every compilation unit, just to
placate
the angry gods :-)  I have no real idea what might happen if I failed to
incant such spells, or who might be offended by my incanting them. Oh
well. Anyone got a good compiler for Legalese?? :-)

Despite their age, I still redistribute Marcus's FAQs by permission on
BURKS (http://burks.bton.ac.uk/burks/language/ada/) since I haven't
found
any better replacements yet.

(Suggestions, please?)

Happy new Millenium, BTW...

-----------------------------------------------------------------
 John English              | mailto:je@brighton.ac.uk
 Senior Lecturer           | http://www.comp.it.bton.ac.uk/je
 Dept. of Computing        | ** NON-PROFIT CD FOR CS STUDENTS **
 University of Brighton    |    -- see http://burks.bton.ac.uk
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Re: www.adahome.com?...

[John English]

John English wrote:
> Hmm. Having asked Marcus...

... for which read "Magnus" (blush); I have a friend called Marcus
who got between my brain and my fingers as I typed... :-(

-----------------------------------------------------------------
 John English              | mailto:je@brighton.ac.uk
 Senior Lecturer           | http://www.comp.it.bton.ac.uk/je
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-----------------------------------------------------------------

Re: www.adahome.com?...

[Ted Dennison]

In article <3A57C029.6BC5A685@brighton.ac.uk>,
  John English <je@brighton.ac.uk> wrote:
> Ted Dennison wrote:
> > If I remember correctly, his rationale for copyrighting the FAQ was
> > something along the lines that he wanted to prevent hostile forking
> > of the FAQ. However, he also took care to require his permission for
> > just about any commercial distribution of it. The LRM copyright
> > seems to just have been a crass commercial act (he offers to sell
> > his HTML FAQ on the site, and the licensing terms seem to be crafted
> >  to prevent you from legally acquiring a copy any other way).
>
> Hmm. Having asked Marcus for permission to redistribute the FAQs (and
> receiving this without any quibbles), and then having spoken via email
> and finally meeting him F2F at Ada Europe some years back, I'm
> inclined to be dubious about any implied mercenary motives. Marcus did

I'm sorry, I typed "FAQ" at the end, when I meant to type LRM. Replace
the last "FAQ" in the above paragraph with "LRM". The rest is what I
meant to say. Given the Magnus/Marcus thing, I'm sure you'll understand.
:-)

I don't think we are in disagreement at all.

--
T.E.D.

http://www.telepath.com/~dennison/Ted/TED.html


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Re: www.adahome.com?...

[Robert Dewar]

In article <92d6cb$g57$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
  Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com> wrote:

> No, but it may be fair to say that it reflects the status of
> the AJPO. My understanding is that every bit of work done on
> adahome was funded by the DoD.

Your understanding is incomplete, and this is false and
misleading information.


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Re: www.adahome.com?...

[Andrzej Lewandowski]

"Robert Dewar" <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:92fens$7je$1@nnrp1.deja.com...
> In article <92d6cb$g57$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
>   Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com> wrote:
>
> > No, but it may be fair to say that it reflects the status of
> > the AJPO. My understanding is that every bit of work done on
> > adahome was funded by the DoD.
>
> Your understanding is incomplete, and this is false and
> misleading information.
>

If this is the case, could you please provide complete and true information?
Thanks.

A.L.

Re: www.adahome.com?...

[Robert Dewar]

In article <3a4b456f_3@news3.prserv.net>,
  "Andrzej Lewandowski" <lewandoREMOVE@attglobal.net> wrote:
>
> "Robert Dewar" <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> wrote in message
> news:92fens$7je$1@nnrp1.deja.com...
> > In article <92d6cb$g57$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> >   Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com> wrote:
> >
> > > No, but it may be fair to say that it reflects the status
of
> > > the AJPO. My understanding is that every bit of work done
on
> > > adahome was funded by the DoD.
> >
> > Your understanding is incomplete, and this is false and
> > misleading information.
> >
>
> If this is the case, could you please provide complete and
true information?


OK, here is the information: the work on adahome.com was not
entirely funded by the AJPO as you claim. I do not know the
origin of your claim, and so I cannot refute it in detail!
Perhaps it is you who should cite the source for your original
post :-)


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Re: www.adahome.com?...

[Ted Dennison]

In article <92fmis$dn1$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
  Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> wrote:
> In article <3a4b456f_3@news3.prserv.net>,
>   "Andrzej Lewandowski" <lewandoREMOVE@attglobal.net> wrote:
> >
> > "Robert Dewar" <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> wrote in message
> > news:92fens$7je$1@nnrp1.deja.com...
> > > In article <92d6cb$g57$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> > >   Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > No, but it may be fair to say that it reflects the status
> of
> > > > the AJPO. My understanding is that every bit of work done
> on
> > > > adahome was funded by the DoD.
> > >
> > > Your understanding is incomplete, and this is false and
> > > misleading information.
> > >
> >
> > If this is the case, could you please provide complete and
> true information?
>
> OK, here is the information: the work on adahome.com was not
> entirely funded by the AJPO as you claim. I do not know the

Uhhh, that would probably be rather tough for Andrzej, as he never made
that claim in the first place. Please get snitty at the guilty party
(me) rather than some innocent but curious bystander.

As for me, I never stated it as fact, only as "my understanding". If I
was claiming it to be a fact as you try to imply I was doing, then I
would not have qualified the statement.

> origin of your claim, and so I cannot refute it in detail!
> Perhaps it is you who should cite the source for your original
> post :-)

Again, it was *my* post, and the source of my (mis?)understanding was
one of the last postings that Magnus made here, on 12/16/1998, an exerpt
of which follows:

--
> My understanding is that www.adahome.com is no longer being
> maintained.

Incorrect.  The Ada Home is still being maintained.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to find people who work for free year
after year, even to expand and improve a popular Web site.

Now that the US government/DoD has stopped giving money to the
AJPO/AdaIC for Web presence, maybe there are companies willing to
sponsor the work that is needed to maintain such a site.

Santa Claus, are you out there?
--


--
T.E.D.

http://www.telepath.com/~dennison/Ted/TED.html


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Re: www.adahome.com?...

[David Botton]

AdaHome is not maintained even if there is claims that it is. E-mails do not
get answered, people have sent checks to have ads posted that were cashed
(claim made on CLA) yet never placed up, there are more dead links then
alive, and we can keep going.

I didn't undertake The Ada Resource Treasury which later became AdaPower to
replace AdaHome, but saddly, AdaHome has at this point become a site that
damages the Ada community more then it helps by clearly giving it the
apearance of a dead language and a dead community.

It is a shame that Magnus has been unreachable (I haven't tried in the last
year though). It would be better to trim down AdaHome to contents that is
still current and link out to SigAda, AdaIC and AdaPower for more
information. At least then AdaHome would not be damaging us and all the old
links to AdaHome would lead to more up to date sites.

David Botton

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com>

> Incorrect.  The Ada Home is still being maintained.
>
> Unfortunately, it is difficult to find people who work for free year
> after year, even to expand and improve a popular Web site.

Re: www.adahome.com?...

[Ted Dennison]

In article <005501c07108$050589e0$0202a8c0@dbdell2000>,
  comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org wrote:
> AdaHome is not maintained even if there is claims that it is. E-mails
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com>
>
> > Incorrect.  The Ada Home is still being maintained.
> >
> > Unfortunately, it is difficult to find people who work for free year
> > after year, even to expand and improve a popular Web site.

Well, again this was a post Magnus made slightly over two years ago, not
one I made today. Even back then, I think the claim was demonstrably false.

The second paragraph is false too. I personally *had* offered to help
maintain it for free, if he'd just give me access. I wouldn't have been
capable of taking it over, but I could have at least fixed any broken
links that annoyed me.

I included the posting because of the passage that implied (very roughly
paraphprasing) that now that his DoD sugar-daddy was gone, he couldn't
afford to do it any more.

I don't want to get out of hand Magnus-bashing here. His site did a
great deal for the Ada community for quite a few years. People's
interests can change over time; there's nothing sinister about that. But
I think this should be a valuable lesson to us all on the evils of
restrctively licensing generally-useful information.

--
T.E.D.

http://www.telepath.com/~dennison/Ted/TED.html


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Re: www.adahome.com?...

[David Botton]

> Well, again this was a post Magnus made slightly over two years ago, not
> one I made today. Even back then, I think the claim was demonstrably
false.

Sorry, I must have glanced over it quickly and though it was your post.

I recall the post well. I had not received any responses to e-mails before
or immediately after that post. I had also offered to assist.

I am certainly not bashing him or the efforts he initialy put in. I am
though very upset that he has allowed his site (one that is still being
mentioned in articles and other media) to become a detriment to the
community he once looked to benefit.

The least he could do is turn over the keys to those of us willing to fix
his site up, or give up the domain name so some one else can rebuild a site
in its place.


> I think this should be a valuable lesson to us all on the evils of
> restrctively licensing generally-useful information.

Well at least he is a billboard for the FSF of what can happen if... :-)

David Botton

Re: www.adahome.com?...

[Wes Groleau]

> I think this should be a valuable lesson to us all on the evils of
> restrctively licensing generally-useful information.

The problem is not the licensing, which as was already noted
has no teeth.  The problem is lack of maintainance.  

Maybe he isn't able to maintain it? (I doubt that, though)
I have some wrong genealogical information posted under a
domain name that still exists, but messages to root, admin,
postmaster, etc. bounce, as do messages to the contact
information received via 'whois'

-- 
Wes Groleau
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau

Re: www.adahome.com?...

[Ted Dennison]

In article <3A538B89.F0683965@ftw.rsc.raytheon.com>,
  Wes Groleau <wwgrol@ftw.rsc.raytheon.com> wrote:
>
> > I think this should be a valuable lesson to us all on the evils of
> > restrctively licensing generally-useful information.
>
> The problem is not the licensing, which as was already noted
> has no teeth.  The problem is lack of maintainance.

No, there are *multiple* problems. You are referring to the problem that
there is a very large derilect Ada site drifting along the web, which
needs to be either towed to port or destroyed, as it is a hazard to
navigation. The problem I was referring to was that the Ada comminuty
(perhaps foolishly) helped build and outfit that hulk, but is now
prevented by law from salvaging anything valuable off of it before it
all rots.

--
T.E.D.

http://www.telepath.com/~dennison/Ted/TED.html


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Re: www.adahome.com?...

[p.obry]

"David Botton" <David@Botton.com> writes:

> AdaHome is not maintained even if there is claims that it is. E-mails do not
> get answered, people have sent checks to have ads posted that were cashed
> (claim made on CLA) yet never placed up, there are more dead links then
> alive, and we can keep going.
> 
> I didn't undertake The Ada Resource Treasury which later became AdaPower to
> replace AdaHome, but saddly, AdaHome has at this point become a site that
> damages the Ada community more then it helps by clearly giving it the
> apearance of a dead language and a dead community.

I second that. At this point the best for the Ada community would be to see
AdaHome closing (sad to say as Ada Home as been a great site).

Pascal.

-- 

--|------------------------------------------------------
--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
--| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
--|------------------------------------------------------
--|         http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal.obry
--|
--| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"

Re: www.adahome.com?...

[Ehud Lamm]

<p.obry@wanadoo.fr> wrote in message news:uy9wz7ech.fsf@wanadoo.fr...
>
> "David Botton" <David@Botton.com> writes:
>
> > I didn't undertake The Ada Resource Treasury which later became AdaPower
to
> > replace AdaHome, but saddly, AdaHome has at this point become a site
that
> > damages the Ada community more then it helps by clearly giving it the
> > apearance of a dead language and a dead community.
>
> I second that. At this point the best for the Ada community would be to
see
> AdaHome closing (sad to say as Ada Home as been a great site).
>
> Pascal.
>

David, is it possible to put the Steelman on Adapower, like you did for the
RM/Rationale?
It is one of things I still go to AdaHome for.


--
Ehud Lamm   mslamm@mscc.huji.ac.il

Re: www.adahome.com?...

[Ted Dennison]

In article <92idp3$39c$1@news.huji.ac.il>,
  "Ehud Lamm" <mslamm@mscc.huji.ac.il> wrote:
>
> David, is it possible to put the Steelman on Adapower, like you did
> for the RM/Rationale?
> It is one of things I still go to AdaHome for.

If I remember correctly, the LRM was given to him by someone else who
used a tool to perform the HTMLization from a text copy. He may need a
volunteer to perform the same service for Steelman.

--
T.E.D.

http://www.telepath.com/~dennison/Ted/TED.html


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Re: www.adahome.com?...

[David Botton]

The reason for that was to avoid Magnus's (c) (ther is now an official HTML
RM that I will use to replace the current one on AdaPower that lacks his
(c)). Steelman HTML was done by David Wheeler, I am sure there will not be a
problem copying it on to AdaPower.

David Botton

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com>


> If I remember correctly, the LRM was given to him by someone else who
> used a tool to perform the HTMLization from a text copy. He may need a
> volunteer to perform the same service for Steelman.

Re: www.adahome.com?...

[Ehud Lamm]

David Botton <David@Botton.com> wrote in message
news:001501c071d0$c3e6e840$0402a8c0@db2000...
> The reason for that was to avoid Magnus's (c) (ther is now an official
HTML
> RM that I will use to replace the current one on AdaPower that lacks his
> (c)). Steelman HTML was done by David Wheeler, I am sure there will not be
a
> problem copying it on to AdaPower.
>

That would be great. A link to the Ada83 Rational/LRM (on AdaIC, if I am not
mistaken) would conclude the documents I refer my students to.


--
Ehud Lamm   mslamm@mscc.huji.ac.il

Re: www.adahome.com?...

[Robert Dewar]

In article <001501c071d0$c3e6e840$0402a8c0@db2000>,
  comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org wrote:
> The reason for that was to avoid Magnus's (c) (ther is now an
official HTML
> RM that I will use to replace the current one on AdaPower
that lacks his
> (c)). Steelman HTML was done by David Wheeler, I am sure
there will not be a
> problem copying it on to AdaPower.

Perhaps someone SHOULD step on the (c) for the RM that is
on Adahome. This is almost certainly an incorrect copyright
claim in any case, and we could see if Magnus is still on
the planet :-)


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Re: www.adahome.com?...

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <00d101c0712a$7123a360$ace7fea9@ix.netcom.com>, "Richard Riehle" <adaworks@earthlink.net> writes:

> This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

Please don't send MIME to comp.lang.ada.

> The least he could do is turn over the keys to those of us willing
> to fix his site up, or give up the domain name so some one else can
> rebuild a site in its place.
> 
> The "he" in that sentence, Magnus Kempe, may not be in a position
> to do anything to fix adahome at this time.  This is one of the
> problems with creating a password protected web site with only
> one person knowing the password.

Passwords are irrelevant.  Somewhere there is a physical machine.
Anyone with legal authority could change the content of the machine
(or change the routing of that URL to a different machine).

I realize that at some level of abstraction one might view "password"
as the equivalent of "legal authority", but that is just too loose for
those of us who are security geeks.

Re: www.adahome.com?...

[Ted Dennison]

In article <00c501c0712f$0d306190$0202a8c0@dbdell2000>,
  comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org wrote:

> Yes you can! My wife knows my user names and passwords and should I
> disapear, you are free to call her and get them :-) I'll add to my

Hmm. You drive separate cars, I hope. :-)

--
T.E.D.

http://www.telepath.com/~dennison/Ted/TED.html


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