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OS/2 - Technical => Applications => Topic started by: madcrow on 2007.11.08, 23:29:43

Title: Who owns Describe these days?
Post by: madcrow on 2007.11.08, 23:29:43
I know that Describe (the comapny) went out of business, but did anybody buy them or is DeScribe an orphan product. If we could figure out who exactly owns the IP these days maybe we could get a rerelease (or maybe even a source release, which would let us develop a better alternative to that massive heap of bloat known as OpenOffice)

Any leads?
Title: Re: Who owns Describe these days?
Post by: Terry on 2007.11.09, 03:52:51
As far as I can remember, Jim Lenanne owned and kept the code when Describe closed its doors.  Here are links describing the "DeScribe Story" circa 1996:

OS/2 eZine - Review - DeScribe 5.0 And Voyager CD...
http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n3/describe.html (http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n3/describe.html)

OS/2 eZine - Editorial - DeScribe, Electronic Publishing and Administrivia...
http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n6/editor.html (http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n6/editor.html)

OS/2 eZine - 1997 Readers' Choice Awards...
http://www.os2ezine.com/v3n01/business.htm (http://www.os2ezine.com/v3n01/business.htm)

Amazon - Entrepreneurship: "the rich days are over"...
http://www.amazon.com/Entrepreneurship-discusses-prospects-processing-Soft-Letter/dp/B00092XGZU (http://www.amazon.com/Entrepreneurship-discusses-prospects-processing-Soft-Letter/dp/B00092XGZU)

The Voyager CD is seen every once in a while on eBay, and; how I picked up copy of DeScribe, and a Mesa Spreadsheet to boot!
Title: Re: Who owns Describe these days?
Post by: madcrow on 2007.11.09, 18:13:09
Quote from: Terry on 2007.11.09, 03:52:51
As far as I can remember, Jim Lenanne owned and kept the code when Describe closed its doors.  Here are links describing the "DeScribe Story" circa 1996:

OS/2 eZine - Review - DeScribe 5.0 And Voyager CD...
http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n3/describe.html (http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n3/describe.html)

OS/2 eZine - Editorial - DeScribe, Electronic Publishing and Administrivia...
http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n6/editor.html (http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n6/editor.html)

OS/2 eZine - 1997 Readers' Choice Awards...
http://www.os2ezine.com/v3n01/business.htm (http://www.os2ezine.com/v3n01/business.htm)

Amazon - Entrepreneurship: "the rich days are over"...
http://www.amazon.com/Entrepreneurship-discusses-prospects-processing-Soft-Letter/dp/B00092XGZU (http://www.amazon.com/Entrepreneurship-discusses-prospects-processing-Soft-Letter/dp/B00092XGZU)

The Voyager CD is seen every once in a while on eBay, and; how I picked up copy of DeScribe, and a Mesa Spreadsheet to boot!

Hmm. Well I have the Describe 5 + Mesa 2 CD, but I was thinking more of:

1. Who would I talk to in order to get permission to distribute ISOs of it (or at least the Describe part of it, what with Mesa still being sold and all)

2. Who to talk to in order to hopefully get some source code released... OpenOffice is CRUD and the availability of a better alternative would serve the FOSS and OS/2 communities well...

I'll have to look the person that you mentioned up, though...
Title: Re: Who owns Describe these days?
Post by: RobertM on 2007.11.09, 23:39:15
Quote from: madcrow on 2007.11.09, 18:13:09
Hmm. Well I have the Describe 5 + Mesa 2 CD, but I was thinking more of:

Feel like selling it to me? I cant find mine, and though I have an installed copy still, I'd like to be able to install it on another machine with the proper templates and WPS integration installed.

-Robert
Title: Re: Who owns Describe these days?
Post by: os2monkey on 2007.11.10, 06:14:18
The original owner and address was:
James P. Lennane 
4820 Bayshore Drive, Suite D,
Naples, Florida 34112-7337

There have been two other businesses associated with that same address, Eljer Industries & naplesbotanicalgarden (the last one being as recent as 2003 it seems).

These are the phone numbers I have found to have been associated to those businesses:
941-643-7275
813-732-5500
(914) 732-5500

So it's possible the original owner still lives at that address. You might want to write a postal letter to that address (since apparently he still did live there in 2003) and also try to call those numbers to see if any are still active.

I haven't read anything about the sourcecode being sold to any other parties.

Good luck.
Title: Re: Who owns Describe these days?
Post by: os2monkey on 2007.11.10, 06:32:19
You might also try to contact Dennis E. Powell of LinuxPlanet.
In 2001 he wrote this article stating he was in contact with James Lennane about porting Describe to linux:
http://linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/opinions/3916/2/

He also wrote this article also mentioning Decribe in 2000:
http://linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/opinions/2742/2/

So perhaps he can help you get in contact with James Lennane, if he still has the contact information and it's still valid.
He seems quite passionate about getting Descibe on linux in those articles, so perhaps you should consider parterning with this venture with him.
Title: Re: Who owns Describe these days?
Post by: talldad on 2007.11.12, 12:10:16
Please also remember that DeScribe (still my favourite wp, still used on both XP and OS/2-eCS 1.2 at different times) also includes sub-systems and code of other parties.

Thus the idea of opening the source, or of renewing the licensing is a minefield of "who owns what bits?"

If you were around and recall what happened with Open Watcom, it took over a year to clean up the code, removing parts that were not planned, or could not be permitted, to go open.

Likewise those watching the great progress made with the Voice PMMail project will recognise that such visions of re-writing or re-releasing a program are not for the faint-hearted.

So whilst I heartily concur with your sentiments, I suggest that you think long and hard about the likely scale of difficulty of doing anything with DeScribe code.

Cheers

John Angelico
OS/2 SIG
Melbourne PC User Group
Melbourne VIC
Australia
Title: Re: Who owns Describe these days?
Post by: RobertM on 2007.11.12, 21:02:17
John is indeed correct. Most (or all?) of the import and export features (and probably many of the functions that handled embedding images) utilized someone else's code. As far as I know though, all of that code was contained in external DLLs that with the correct information, shouldnt be too hard to re-implement.

-Robert