C70:info-cpm (07/14/82)
>From LEOR@Mit-Mc Tue Jul 13 23:17:32 1982
I second smb's solution, if not as a solution then at least as a good idea:
anyone who puts software in the public domain should attach to it, in a form
as likely as possible to stay with it, a note regarding desireable uses of
the software. This might not prove particularly enforceable legally, but
at least there would be more pressure on the opportunists to not consider
a ripoff. An example: On my BDS C distributiton disks, there is a lot of code
(both in C and in assembly language) that I essentially think of as in the
public domain. That is why I stuffed it all into the cpm bds-c archives. But
I didn't put any copyright notice on it or anything; subsequently, my code
has shown up in places like the Supersoft C library, and naturally I don't
get any credit for it! So, I wish I had put copyright notices. Sigh.
-leorC70:info-cpm (07/14/82)
>From lauren@Ucla-Security Wed Jul 14 00:31:15 1982
I don't think the suggested "restriction" notices will serve much
purpose. I *believe* that most such attempts at "restrictive"
definitions of "public domain" have failed when they reached court.
It's not even clear that the situation is even all that simple.
If there are piles of public domain software around, and someone decides
to collect various sorts of programs into USEFUL collections, why shouldn't
they be able to sell them? Not everyone can afford to work for free!
If you admit that selling is OK, how can you say that THIS price is ok but
THIS price is a ripoff? I don't understand how such determinations can
be anything but subjective -- and good luck making subjective determinations
like that work in a courtroom!
Another point: Say that someone has a big program (say a database program)
that they want to sell (they've written it themselves). Just to make
things easier for the users of their software, they decide to include
a number of related public domain programs with their package. Obviously,
the whole thing has a single price. How do you divide out the non-
public from the public-domain software in a single distribution of this
type?
The whole issue is decidedly non-trivial.
--Lauren--C70:info-cpm (07/24/82)
>From decvax!duke!uok!uokvax!mwm@Ucb-C70 Fri Jul 23 18:48:28 1982
In addition to what lauren pointed at, let's take the case that
apparently caused a lot of flack: the reselling of various versions of
Ron Cain's small C compiler. In most cases, the resellers have taken
the compiler, extended it, and are reselling the result. These people
want to be paid for that work, and I can't say that I blame them.
Especially those who credit Ron (which some do in their advertising).
An analogous situation exists for software that you pay for. If you've
looked into getting source to one of the OEM Eunices, you here things
like "Well, we want $6000 for it, and we can only sell it if you
already have a Western source license." Once again, these people want
to get paid for there work. Since they started with something they paid
for, nobody bitches. I don't see that what they are doing is all that
different from what is being done to public domain software.
mike