Draft talk:Absoft Fortran Compilers

Background

There are two main needs that I am trying to meet with this article:

1. To provide an informative page to link to from references to Absoft Fortran compilers on a variety of pages on Wikipedi asuch as List of Compilers, and
2. To provide information for users who look to Wikipedia for help.

To this end I provided a section on the history of Absoft Fortran, which became pretty detailed after I e-mailed Absoft and asked for information. The key point is that the Absoft compilers have been around a long time and have been highly respected for many years; the fact that Microsoft licensed Absoft to write Microsoft Fortran for the Mac on the basis of their existing product, Absoft MacFortran, is a key point there.

The other main thing that I have for users is my personal solution to providing executables to others that do not have the compiler installed, and I list DLLs that must be included with such distribution in the article.

I'm not new to Wikipedia, but until recently I have only done very occasional minor edits like fixing dead links. Thus this article may have some neophyte issues of style or errors. I very much want my first page to be a quality article, so if you see something, either fix it if it is minor or tell me here if a significant amount of time or attention is needed.

My principal issue at present is that I don't identify a well-focused copyright tag for scanned images of boxes for Absoft products for the Mac, produced for Microsoft on contract. They are included to provide milestones of interest to readers. I believe that images of a box used for packaging a commercial product is probably an image of a copyrighted work but one that has no reasonable expectation of privacy and such meets "fair use" so long as the context is appropriate, which incidentally seems to be Wikipedia rules about mentioning third parties in articles. I believe that "PD | reason" is a good one, but it seems to me that a "fair use" tag would be best. A comment by an editor that is knowledgeable about images of packaging of commmercial products would help; once so armed I can edit the picture file talk pages with corrected copyright tags myself.

-motorfingers- (talk) 17:49, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Tonight, I heard from Absoft regarding the boxes of the 1985 compilers for Mac Fortran and Basic by Microsoft. There is no copyright on the box. On the back, the bottom line says that "Microsoft" is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. The person that maintains legal files from that period is on vacation but will be back in a week for more definitive information, if any. In any case, we need to honor the Microsoft and Absoft trademarks. -motorfingers- (talk) 05:24, 26 May 2014 (UTC)