Talk:Postcardware
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I don't know much about wikipedia editing, but i have no idea why there are seperate entries for postcardware and cardware. The article, assuming "the unwashed masses" wish for it to be postcardware, should read something like this: "Postcardware, also known as cardware..." There, simple.
First instance of postcardware?[edit]
In the course of looking for something else, I ran across the Postcardware entry, and saw that it credited Aaron Giles, author of JPEGView, with the first use of the concept. This made me wonder if my postcardware predated his 1991 use, so I started looking for it on the web.
I managed to find it on some ftp sites, and see by the documentation file that it did predate Aaron's JPEGView by about two years. The program in question was written in assembler for the Amiga, and consisted of two programs, "find" and "updatedb". Originally, I released it with a text file for documantation, but along the way, someone obviously replaced that with a ".doc" file.
The archive file is on a number of ftp sites, and since that release, there have been a number of modifications to it, including GUI front-ends. The file name is "find.lha" and it's an lharc file. I ftp'd the file from:
ftp.back2roots.org/pub/back2roots/cds/fred_fish/goldfish_vol1_9404_rev1_false_cd2/d7xx/d705/mfr/goodies/
I quote from the find.DOC file:
"FIND, Copyright © 1989, by Larry Phillips.
This program may be freely distributed, in its entirety only, including updatedb, find, and find.doc. No chage may be made for this program beyond a reasonable media charge. It may be distributed on any public or private BBS or telecommunication service, provided there are no extra charges for downloading, beyond normal connect time fees.
If you use find, and like it, if it saves you time, or if you have comments, criticisms or a wish list, please send me a postcard from where you live. Consider the cost of the postcard and stamp a shareware fee. If I could include the card and stamp in the distribution, I would."
I only received relatively few postcards, probably 30 or so.
I cannot at this time be more specific with the exact date I released it, because I no longer use my Amigas. One day I may dig them out and have a look at the files. It was released on the net, through a newsgroup. The earliest reference to it I can find through Google's Group search is on June 6, 1989, at
In this posting I say I've just finished a first cut of the program. The next posting to mention it is on July 22, 1989, in which I speak of a bug, at
so I would imagine the release date was between these two dates.
I really don't know if this was the first instance of Postcardware, or if I got the idea from some previous program, but there you have it. I wanted to present this in the discussion, rather than editing, because I didn't want to unilaterally remove Aaron's name from the entry. I suspect he is still the first to issue Postcardware for the Mac.
Lar3ry (talk) 06:46, 7 September 2008 (UTC) Larry Phillips
Possible earliest usage[edit]
I suggest that this should qualify as postcardware since the same family of licenses (CC, GPL etc.) is commonly used for both "free to copy" software and "free to copy" documentation.
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd10xx/EWD1000.PDF
It ends with the para as below:
Important Request Would everybody - and this time I really mean everybody - who sees this text be so kind as to inform me that he or she has seen it? A postcard stating name (and affiliation) suffices (End of Important Request).
Austin , 11 January 1987 prof. dr. Edsger W. Dijkstra