Copyright 1992-2016 by Kevin G. Barkes

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redistributed provided no alterations of any kind are
made to this file.

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DCL DIALOGUE

Originally published October, 1992

A Sign of the Times?

By Kevin G. Barkes


It wasn't particularly odd to see him poring over the
hard copies, nor routing specific messages to certain
programmers and support staffers.

What was rather strange was his stamping "SECRET-
PROPRIETARY INFORMATION" on each of the pages, which had
been downloaded from CompuServe's VAXFORUM, DECUServe,
INFOVAX, DSNlink and my own BBS system.

"Excuse me," I asked, "but why are you stamping `secret' on
that stuff? It's all from public forums or copyrighted by
someone else. You can't legally claim ownership of it."

"Who's claiming ownership?" he said. "This is strictly
business. Look, we pay a fortune for DEC support and for
connect time to all these services. We don't want our people
giving away information we pay big bucks to obtain," he
explained. "By stamping it company confidential, we can fire
anyone who redistributes the information."

"But," I stuttered, "a lot of that is very basic
information, things you could learn from VMS online HELP. It
sounds like you could fire one of your people for attending
a DECUS symposium and answering a simple question from
someone sitting next to him."

"Precisely," the fellow said. "Knowledge is power,
especially in the '90s. If a bit of information here saves
one of our systems people an hour, that's money saved, which
lowers our costs and makes us more competitive."

"I can understand you protecting trade secrets, source code
for your own products," I said. "But this is crazy. The
whole point of network communications is the sharing of
ideas, getting help and giving it, the exchange of
information."

"What's your point?" he asked, a bit tersely.

"If everyone took your approach," I explained, "the free
exchange of information would evaporate. Everyone would
end up re-inventing the wheel. How much time would it
take to develop all the `free' software you've obtained
from all these sources?"

Our conversation was interrupted by the arrival of The
Boss, who had called me to do some work because of the
recent departure of his system manager. I sat down at
his desk and noticed a photocopy of one of my "DCL Dialogue"
columns tacked up on the wall. It had "SECRET-
PROPRIETARY INFORMATION" stamped on it.

"We've had a real turnover problem here," The Boss confided
as he shoved a 20-page nondisclosure agreement across
the desk for me to sign. "I don't get it."

He didn't get me, either.


MORE DIALOGUE

Comments and updates on prior columns:

Robert G. Schaffrath and Stewart Turley noted that holding
down a key could overload the terminal buffer and cause
the TERMLOCK.COM procedure (April, 1992) to exit with
a "%RMS-W-TNS, terminator not seen" error message.

One solution is to modify the line following LOOP2:

$ LOOP2:
$ READ/ERROR=LOOP2/END=LOOP2/PROMPT="" SYS$COMMAND PWO

David Hittner even further condensed June's DCL arcana
example:

$ INTERACTIVE="SHOW USERS"
$ 'F$FAO("!ASF$MODE()","'")

And in the never-ending quest to to make PURGE_MIDDLE.COM
(March, 1992) the most reviewed and debugged piece of DCL
code on the planet, Randal R. Seager suggested using the
method described in last month's column, namely a single
PURGE/EXCLUDE instead of two DELETEs. Just wanted to assure
you that your idea wasn't appropriated, Randal; it arrived
just after the deadline.

Finally, thanks to Ethan Waldman and James C. Ferguson
for their comments on dealing with files nearing the
VMS version limit.


***************************

Kevin G. Barkes is an independent consultant whose laid-back
image was somewhat damaged by the photo of him in a business
suit which appeared in the July DEC Pro. Have no fear; the
editor cropped the picture to conceal the bermuda shorts he
was also wearing. (The ensemble caused quite a stir in the
hotel lobby.) Kevin lurks on comp.os.vms and can be reached
at kgbarkes@gmail.com.