[Ted Craven]

I suppose the duty falls to me to remind folks of the long-standing policy at Pace and Cap, established at the beginning by Bill Varone, that we do not provide the means to share copyrighted software published by PIRCO, O Henry House, Jim Bradshaw, Howard Sartin or anyone else for that matter.

If someone once bought and paid for software and for instance now needs a replacement disk - all you have to say is 'I paid Doc or Jimmy for such and such and lost it - can anyone help me out' and that's OK, your word is good and that's part of what we do here: try to help each other out.

Although he did not mention it in his opening post, that's what Jhorse wrote to me, and that's why he's posting here. That's great that folks can help him out!

But if you never owned a particular software program, never paid money for it, please do not ask for folks to share a copy with you. You are most welcomed to ask if anyone has ORIGINAL disks to sell you (or give away for free), but please do not ask for a copy of software you never owned that can continue to run on someone's computer who sold or gave it to you.

This policy respects the rights of the original creators of the programs and their families, and is technically the legal - if not also the honourable thing to do. FYI, the Sartin Family continues to receive payments (via this website) for software which Doc copyrighted (e.g. Val4, Energy, Kgen, Thoromation) or for which he gave permission to use source code (RDSS).

Some may dispute that older software, no longer supported by the authors who may not in fact even be alive anymore, is all fair game for copying. And - there is no policing here, aside from messages and requests like this. But please do be aware of the Pace and Cap policy, and if you happen to hold an opinion like this, please don't do it in public.

If anyone feels moved to honour this spirit of respecting copyright and the genius of our forebears and would like to make any payment to the Sartin Family for software they actually make use of and find valuable - and which they perhaps received for free from a well-meaning member here, please feel free to contact me. I pass on all such contributions quarterly to the Sartin Family.

That said - please feel free to help each other out in any way, in the spirit of the above policy.

Thanks for your understanding and thanks for your generosity!

Ted