4 ms·

Apparently WordStar has not been released for free by the owners (as Word 5.5 for DOS was), it's just been unilaterally packaged by a fan hoping not to get in t

Apparently WordStar has not been released for free by the owners (as Word 5.5 for DOS was), it's just been unilaterally packaged by a fan hoping not to get in trouble.

joshuaissac 2y ago
Yes, the article lists some two potential owners of WordStar: > It's not clear to us who owns the intellectual property. We doubt it's one of the surviving offshoots, today's Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, but it could be another offshoot, Software MacKiev. Whereas this release is made by writer Robert J. Sawyer, who does not appear to be affiliated with any of the potential owners. Edit: Even though The Register calls this a free re-release, Sawyer himself just calls it an archive: https://sfwriter.com/blog/?p=5806 https://sfwriter.com/blog/?p=5806
- xena 2y ago
  The pro gamer move is to release it and then whoever copystrikes you is the owner
  - rvnx 2y ago
    True, but the real elite move is to copyright strike things that have no owner and collect the money
  - diggan 2y ago
    It's Cunningham's Law but for figuring out who owns the copyright (if anyone) to no-longer-updated software.
AshamedCaptain 2y ago
Maybe we should just train an LLM on it, then ask it to build a entirely copyright-free clone of WordStar? (sarcasm).
- perihelions 2y ago
  There's... absolutely nothing wrong with cloning the featureset of software? Even WordStar itself started out as a clone of a different editor, if I've understood the Wikipedia history ("...When IBM announced it was bringing DisplayWrite to the PC, MicroPro focused on creating a clone of it which they marketed, in 1984, as WordStar 2000..."). And in turn, WordStar itself has been cloned multiple times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordStar#WordStar_2000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordStar#WordStar_2000 If ML would make it much easier to clone software UX, make that kind of task accessible to non-programmer users—then, all power to the users. I'm in solidarity with users. I'm in solidarity with their wish to configure their text-editing software to look and feel exactly as they want it. This shouldn't be the sole province of Emacs priests; if people of the future can do all that magic, not with dozens of hours of Lisp hacking, but with a flick of an LLM wand—the world is that much a better, richer, place for the human species.
  - AshamedCaptain 2y ago
    > There's... absolutely nothing wrong with cloning the featureset of software? There is if you literally use the code for that software to build your clone, either directly or through an LLM trained on it, which is my remark implied. Even cloning the entire featureset of a software is problematic... > If ML would make it much easier to clone software UX, make that kind of task accessible to non-programmer users—then, all power to the users This is a contortion. Certainly the core of what you say is true -- but for that what you need is free software, either by political encouragement or by law. Not by making up a loophole where only a certain subset of rube goldberg machines are free to violate copyright but normal users are not. You end up in a world where the Lisp hacker cannot modify his word processor, but the guy with the LLM "can". The ridiculousness of such scenario is precisely what I wanted to point with my sarcasm.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - ngcc_hk 2y ago
    But WordStar 2000 is not WordStar. In fact I recalled correctly this move is one of many reasons it died.
dang 2y ago
Ok, we've belatedly taken 'for free' out of the title. Thanks!
- defrost 2y ago
  No argument from me, makes sense. I posted this with the title "as it was" from The Register.

Apparently WordStar has not been released for free by the owners (as Word 5.5 for DOS was), it's just been unilaterally packaged by a fan hoping not to get in trouble.

joshuaissac 2y ago

Yes, the article lists some two potential owners of WordStar: > It's not clear to us who owns the intellectual property. We doubt it's one of the surviving offshoots, today's Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, but it could be another offshoot, Software MacKiev. Whereas this release is made by writer Robert J. Sawyer, who does not appear to be affiliated with any of the potential owners. Edit: Even though The Register calls this a free re-release, Sawyer himself just calls it an archive: https://sfwriter.com/blog/?p=5806 https://sfwriter.com/blog/?p=5806

xena 2y ago
The pro gamer move is to release it and then whoever copystrikes you is the owner
- rvnx 2y ago
  True, but the real elite move is to copyright strike things that have no owner and collect the money
- diggan 2y ago
  It's Cunningham's Law but for figuring out who owns the copyright (if anyone) to no-longer-updated software.

AshamedCaptain 2y ago

Maybe we should just train an LLM on it, then ask it to build a entirely copyright-free clone of WordStar? (sarcasm).

perihelions 2y ago
There's... absolutely nothing wrong with cloning the featureset of software? Even WordStar itself started out as a clone of a different editor, if I've understood the Wikipedia history ("...When IBM announced it was bringing DisplayWrite to the PC, MicroPro focused on creating a clone of it which they marketed, in 1984, as WordStar 2000..."). And in turn, WordStar itself has been cloned multiple times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordStar#WordStar_2000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordStar#WordStar_2000 If ML would make it much easier to clone software UX, make that kind of task accessible to non-programmer users—then, all power to the users. I'm in solidarity with users. I'm in solidarity with their wish to configure their text-editing software to look and feel exactly as they want it. This shouldn't be the sole province of Emacs priests; if people of the future can do all that magic, not with dozens of hours of Lisp hacking, but with a flick of an LLM wand—the world is that much a better, richer, place for the human species.
- AshamedCaptain 2y ago
  > There's... absolutely nothing wrong with cloning the featureset of software? There is if you literally use the code for that software to build your clone, either directly or through an LLM trained on it, which is my remark implied. Even cloning the entire featureset of a software is problematic... > If ML would make it much easier to clone software UX, make that kind of task accessible to non-programmer users—then, all power to the users This is a contortion. Certainly the core of what you say is true -- but for that what you need is free software, either by political encouragement or by law. Not by making up a loophole where only a certain subset of rube goldberg machines are free to violate copyright but normal users are not. You end up in a world where the Lisp hacker cannot modify his word processor, but the guy with the LLM "can". The ridiculousness of such scenario is precisely what I wanted to point with my sarcasm.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- ngcc_hk 2y ago
  But WordStar 2000 is not WordStar. In fact I recalled correctly this move is one of many reasons it died.

dang 2y ago

Ok, we've belatedly taken 'for free' out of the title. Thanks!

defrost 2y ago
No argument from me, makes sense. I posted this with the title "as it was" from The Register.