I just installed OPENSTEP on a Sun SPARC clone, so, for the first time in 15 years, I have a system with a working floppy drive capable of reading NeXT disks. On those disks I have the following software for black hardware:
Diagram! 1.1
Diagram! 2.0
StayInTouch
Collagist
All of this software seems to require a license key, which I have. Does anyone know the status of this software as far as handing out the license keys?
Diagram! came from Lighthouse Design, which was purchased by Sun. I don't think the company that did StayInTouch or Collagist exists anymore, but I can't find any info about them to know what happened to them.
Do people think it would be OK to make the .pkg archives and license keys freely available? I am concerned that old NeXT software could disappear like software for some of the other old computers that I collect.
alan
Hi,
Lighthouse Design was a great company and cared alot about the NeXT community. They released license codes for almost all of their products for FREE in the middle of 1997.
The following announcenment made on
http://www.lighthouse.com/CurrentProductVersionNumbers.html is from a snapshot of the Lighthouse page as of 1997-07-15:
QuoteThese applications, which run under NEXTSTEP, are no longer available for purchase since NEXTSTEP is no longer a shipping operating system from NeXT Software/Apple Computer, Inc. When Rhapsody becomes a shipping product, watch our web site for potential new product announcements.
In the interest of helping our longtime users, we are giving you a free 2 user license for all Lighthouse applications excluding FrameMaker (only available from Adobe Systems, Inc.), OmniWeb (which already has a 1-user license) and JavaPlan (which is a currently shipping product). There is NO EMAIL SUPPORT available for any of these products, effective July 1, 1997. Check our FAQ server or the online documentation for support assistance.
The keys released by Lighthouse Design can be found on
http://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Software/NEXTSTEP/Apps/Lighthouse_Design/LicenseStrings.txt So future usage of Diagram! version 2.x is safe :)
As far as I could find, the Peanuts team never received (free) release information for the other apps from your list
Cheers
Thanks.
I found the web site (including an archive old site with NeXT info from the time -
http://www.smartsoft.com/attic/nextstep/old_index.html) for SmartSoft, which Collagist and StayInTouch belong to.
I have sent a note asking about handing out old license keys.
Is nextcomputers.org interested in hosting the Diagram! 1.1 and 2.0 pkg and other files?
alan