Thursday, October 4, 2007

Download Inventory

I was meaning to provide access to my normal Subversion repository which provides a full revision history over 40GB of data with accounting for users and groups. Subversion is the most useful piece of software in a Computer Scientist's arsenal; it provides a perfect revision history, but the cost of backup becomes prohibitive if files change frequently at random.

A DVD or hard disk is like a piece of land. Some real estate is more valuable than other places; so with software, but the going rate for a pre-mastered CD (700MB) loaded with software is $50-100. The cost is the same for access to the latest edition of my software collection of backup disks.

Software is traditionally exchanged using physical tokens and is sometimes marked as "not for resale" using license agreements. Insofar as I am an independent human being without a degree in law, I choose to ignore the legal risk that a piece of software I distribute at a particular (700MB) data storage cost may have a copyright claim against it.

I will send a digital catalog to each publisher that contributed to the release, along with a note indicating that I have enjoyed testing their programs. How does that sound for a business model? I wonder if I am obligated to standard handshaking procedure in this case.

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