>I have the Apple][ reference manual and a whole pile of other Apple reference
>books and material scanned ... I'd like to make this available, but I have not
>done so due to the copyright question - posting a published book which was sold
>on it's own merit seems less legit than manuals which came with hardware.
>Anyone have any thoughts/experiences on this?
A quick follow-up to this before anyone "jumps" on me - I would not even think
about posting something which is still available from standard sources - I have
not checked to see if you can actually still buy an A2 reference manual from
anyone - perhaps there's someone with a warehouse full of them? As noted above,
this is not something that I am currently considering.
This is more of a "distant future" question - at some point the original material
will not be generally available (this may already be the case for some of it), and
people wishing to learn about these historic machines will have to either borrow it
or steal it (photocopy/scan etc.) - as books get older, rarer and more fragile,
borrowing will become harder and harder, as will physical replication. Are there
any procedures in place to allow this material to be preserved, or does it just "die
off"?
Many of the manufactures of obsolete computer hardware/software that I have been able
to contact have been very helpful. For example, when I asked Dr. Grant, co-founder of
NorthStar computers if I could post the NorthStar OS & software (under my simulator)
and scans of NS documentation, he responded "North Star is defunct so there is no
problem whatsoever. Have fun.". I've had similar responses from a number of other
people who "own" dead computer companies.
Books however are a different matter, with published books, you have both the Author
and the Publisher with interests in the book. I think it would be a lot more complex
to obtain similar permissions, but to be honest, I have not tried - anyone here ever
gotten permission to distribute the content of a published book?
Regards,
--
dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com
com Vintage computing equipment collector.
Received on Mon Apr 19 2004 - 22:23:22 BST