On 10 Nov 2003 00:34:11 -0800, (e-mail address removed) (Kan Yabumoto) wrote:
Kan, I understand and appreciate your concerns. I've withdrawn
clonexx. It's no longer available for download.
As to your finding out about clonexx by accident, you will recall that
we did discuss the "super cloner", as you put it, on alt.comp.batch. I
never made an attempt to engage you further (via email) since I didn't
want to bother you any more with it. The subject of dangers never
arose.
You notice there have been discussions in this thread concerning the
following of freeware redistribution wishes of authors such as
yourself and Charles Dye. I had considered various ways of handling
this. I want and wanted to avoid creating an unnecessarily large
download, a cluttered directory, and other inconveniences for users.
So I included a Info page within the clonexx.exe program itself which
has links to your web sites (and other info). Perhaps you'd like to
offer your comments and ideas concerning how you'd like to see this
handled in situations where several programs are involved.
Art
Art,
I was not totally against the idea of your program working in conjunction
with XXCOPY. I was simply pointing out the need for some additional
warning which I believe is absolutely essential when you publish
some program that has a potential for a huge disaster. Although
it is a very small chance, my experience tells me someone would get
burned. So, I encourage you to make a revised version which
will provide sufficient info as to what the program does and also
what is the worst case scenario. And, the warning must be
presented in *ALL* cases, not just a small print at some corner of
your web site. If you followed *ALL* of my writing in various
newsgroups and also at the XXCOPY discussion group (the XXCOPY
main tech support forum), you will find that I became increasingly
reluctant to even mention the /YY switch (and also the use of
/CLONE --- I now advocate /BACKUP unless /CLONE is absolutely
necessary). So, when I see a program like yours that hard-codes
the scary combination -- /CLONE/YY, my reaction is "boisterous".
In my opinion, if your freeware package helps 1000 users and
make them happy and at the same time just one user who
misunderstands something and loses all his files in D: drive,
then, I will call your effort a failure. I think *ALL*
software publishers (including nice guys out there who have
a genuine "sharing" spirit) have a responsibility to do the
best they can to protect user's precious files from an
accidental loss.
---------
Just another point I wanted to make was that your original
way of packaging (just the three files without any accompanying
text file) the product and the very limited amount of supporting
documents need improvements. As we state in our XXCOPY freeware
package (on our web site and in the accompanying README.DOC),
we would like everyone to honor our wish ----
-------------------------------------------------------
With the freeware license, you may give your friends
a copy of the XXCOPY Freeware, as long as the package
is not altered and remains as a whole.
-------------------------------------------------------
This will eliminate possible confusion as to who owns what
and who is responsible for what. We are open minded and
we often agree with other arrangements as such needs arise.
But, we are currently quite busy and don't want to put
a lot of time in coming up with special arrangements.
Kan Yabumoto
