[Coco] Old Coco Media

[Paul E. Jones]

Ron, et al,

I believe that a few folks on this list would pay.  But, I believe there are
only two reasons why they would do it:
1) To lend a hand to the cost, time, and trouble of the person who did the
work -- a reward, more or less, that is still likely to be less than the
real sweat put into it
2) "For memory sake"

I agree that there is really no "value" in terms on money.  And, as each
year passes, even the "thanks for your hard effort" potential will diminish.

What we ought to do is determine who, if anybody, owns the copyright.  What
happened to Falsoft?  If it just closed and no entity acquired its assets,
then there is no copyright holder. (That could complicate things if, as
somebody suggested, Falsoft did not own the rights.  What I contributed
belonged to Falsoft.)

I tried to contact Ms. Falk not too long ago, but just got an answering
machine and no return call.

I think trying to find Falsoft's successor is the only solution.  The only
other solution is to just make the (likely reasonable) assumption that it's
all in the public domain and see what happens.  Heck, what would the damages
be for things of no value and upon which we had reason to believe were in
the public domain?

Is there anybody in or around Prospect, KY who can go knock on a door?  It
can't be that hard to find out where things stand.

Paul

> -----Original Message-----
> From: coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com [mailto:coco-
> bounces at maltedmedia.com] On Behalf Of Ron Bihler
> Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2008 10:33 PM
> To: coco at maltedmedia.com
> Subject: [Coco] Old Coco Media
> 
> Forgive as I am an outsider voicing my opinions.
> It has been a very long time since I was active in the Coco Community,
> a really long time for that matter.  I was very familiar with the likes
> of Warren Hrach, Charles Pippin and many others that contributed to the
> BBS community and Fidonet at the time.
> How this has all changed but yet stayed the same.  When I took on the
> project of connecting into the Fidonet (Those not familair - it was
> similair to this group but all the people involved would contact a
> local connect or in many cases a Long distance connection to share
> messages across the country).
> At that time the primary systems connected where the XT and AT's of the
> day.  It took some very good and willing to people to put up with the
> software I created and the problems.  Somehow it did get done.  The
> coco has always been the underdog to the bigger machines, but has had a
> solid following (Small thought).
> 
> I syspect many people are like myself, I was big time into the Coco and
> OS9.  Countless hours of typing in Rainbow programs.  However I have a
> very fond memory of this time, I have since moved on.  This is really
> very old technology.  I also work with a bunch of old Hardware based on
> 6809 or 68000 processors, robotics etc.  I can't tell you how hard it
> is to find software or hardware for these old machines, if at all.
> After holding onto the Hardware and Magizines for 15 years, I ended up
> disposing of it (Prior to Ebay being big) as there was NO interest. I
> had all of them up to the introduction of the MM/1, this included Hot
> Coco/ Rainbow and a few issues on one I can't even remember.  Regrets
> yes, but realality steps in and I can't keep it all.
> 
> It would be a shame to lose this piece of history, I do hope something
> happens to archive it.  This sounds like many old hardware peices I
> use, much of the data is lost forever.  Someone has it in a dark store
> room getting moldy to never see the light of day.  I myself have
> nothing left from this time, I had passed on my files for porting to
> the MM/1.  This is history, the only value is for the collector and
> this group and this has to be very limited.  Really now how many people
> are willing to fork out even 20 bucks for a DVD, 20, 40 ???
> 
> Again just me two cents worth.  Had to say something.
> 
> Ron Bihler
> Author of RiBBS system.
> 
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