🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1984@dalcs.UUCP> silvert@dalcs.UUCP (Bill Silvert) writes:
>There is some confusion here about whether the kermit in the developer's
>kit is in the public domain.  The manual seems to say it is (right on
>the title page), but we would like to make sure before passing it on to
>anyone else.

The following is quoted from the material distributed with the KERMIT
distribution from Columbia University:

-----------------------------start of quote----------------------------------

Although KERMIT is free and available to anyone who requests it, it is not in
the "public domain".  The protocol, the manuals, the Columbia implementations,
and many of the contributed implementations bear copyright notices dated 1981
or later, and include a legend like

  Copyright (C) 1985, Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York.
  Permission is granted to any individual or institution to use, copy, or
  redistribute this software so long as it is not sold for profit, provided
  this copyright notice is retained.

The copyright notice is to protect KERMIT, Columbia University, and the
various contributors from having their work usurped by others and sold as a
product.  In addition, the covering letter which we include with a KERMIT tape
states that KERMIT can be passed along to others; "we ask only that profit not
be your goal, credit be given where it is due, and that new material be sent
back to us so that we can maintain a definitive and comprehensive set of KERMIT
implementations".  

------------------------------- end of quote --------------------------------

The document goes on to mention that you can do thing things like include
KERMIT support in a commercial package, but it doesn't seem like that
applies in this case.

In short, there should be no problem as long you don't make money on it.

>To avert any flames about the superiority of xmodem -- some of us work
>on Unix mainframes that support kermit but not xmodem, and would like to
>use SOMETHING for errorfree downloading from the net.

The major advantages to XMODEM are a)that it is more likely to be supported
by a given system and b)that on any given file it tends to be faster than
KERMIT. The increased speed is due to larger packet size (128 vs 94 bytes),
less packet overhead, and the lack of character encoding (which is why an
8-bit data path is needed). 

Actually, however, XMODEM is in many ways inferior to KERMIT, just more
supported in the real world. In particular, XMODEM transfers require an
8-bit data path (no parity) and make no provision for sending batches of
files. (The latter problem is addressed by XMODEM-based protocols such as
MODEM7, TELELINK, YMODEM, and ZMODEM.) Further, KERMIT can be implemented
on many machines (such as IBM mainframes) where KERMIT could never be
implemented.


BTW, there are implementations of XMODEM available which do run under UNIX.
Check net.sources and mod.sources for programs named UMODEM and rz/sz (or
rb/sb).