Re: BCS IR Call for Participation and Booking Form

[Jane Dunlap Smith <[e-mail]>]

Hi, Jill (all) --

Below is a message I sent out last night regarding Maven distribution. 
Bottom line is that CNIDR will not distribute the program for a couple of 
days, based on the wishes of the author. (I will let him know of the 
interest on the other side of the pond!)

We'll post a note to NIR when the distribution is ready.

  --Jane

------

Hello, all Maven enthusiasts --

George and I spoke to Charley Kline (Maven author) at some length this
afternoon after receiving a call from Apple and a fax from the Global
Lecture Hall person (don't have his name on the tip of my tongue). Apple
was asking permission to redistribute Mav en, and the fax listed all our
names as points of contact for distribution. 

Charley Kline has some concerns about distribution which must be
respected. He asks that we wait a couple of days before serving as
distribution points. Specifically, (1) he would like to add a copyright
*statement* (the software is automatically copyrigh ted, with all rights,
including distribution, at the sole discretion of the author) which would
clarify its freely distributable status. (2) check the software for
critical bugs;  he says he got a clean compile only hours before someone
sent a copy to Oceanside and (3) supply a readme file with the
distribution which outlines caveats about the software's operation. 

Specific to point (3), Maven at this point does no compression on the
audio stream; each connection uses 64 KB of bandwidth. This makes the
application potentially "net unfriendly" by chewing up signficant portions
of the data pipes which other applicatio ns (read people) need to use,
especially when connecting as many sites as our flurry of activity last
Friday did. Kline is working with the IETF standards organization and it
would be professionally detrimental to him to be viewed by his peers as an
"irre sponsible" Internet software developer. Thus the caveats are
necessary, and he would like to add some simple compression algorithms
which would at least cut the bandwidth requirements in half. 

CNIDR has offered an anonymous ftp site for distribution (as well as via
gopher and www, of course) and a mailing list site ([e-mail], which
should be in place sometime tomorrow) for user and developer discussion.
CNIDR will not redistribute any co pies of the software until we hear from
Kline. By the way, Kline is not particularly pleased with the person who
distributed the software to Oceanside without first informing him. The
mailing list should help defray some of the load on his personal mailbo x,
as well as serve as a general forum for discussion which can be conducted
in public. 

If you think CNIDR is being a stick-in-the-mud for being precautious -- we
are. It is not only part of our job but part of our sensitivity to the
continued success of the Internet culture of a "circle of gifts" and
responsible use of bandwidth. 

I will also add that Kline says he has released previous source code to
Cornell for potential inclusion in CU-SeeMe. 

I see Maven as one of the anticipated "killer apps" for popularizing the
Internet (e-mail was the first) and very much want to see it succeed. We
told Kline as much, and like many independent software developers, he was
surprised at the immediate populari ty and long-range implications of his
progeny. 

Your cooperation in this would be appreciated.

 --Jane

P.S.This is a rather limited distribution list, so please pass the info
along to others you may think should be contacted.