gnu@sun.uucp (John Gilmore) (09/07/84)
You should note that both the original make program and the changes done by Guido van Rossum are copyright. Just because something came over net.sources doesn't mean it's public domain. I agree though, it's in very poor taste to release something without constraints and then to impose them later because the "free" version might impact sales of your "enhanced" version. It's this kind of provocation that encourages people to "steal" software. It might be fun to make Sellens spend some legal money messing with us, maybe it will eat all his ill-gotten profits. An example where this was done right was James Gosling's Emacs. He would send you a copy free, but you weren't allowed to pass it on to anyone (you could swap diffs with other users, though). When eventually there was commercial potential, he stopped giving out free versions and sold the new enhanced version at a reasonable price. The people who had the original free version didn't get screwed the way Sellens wishes to screw them; they were free to go on using (and not distributing) their copies.