gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) (11/06/86)
[Net.sources.d folks, see <212@sas.UUCP> for context. John Toebes is
upset that The Public Domain Software Connection is selling "his" version
of Hack, which he posted to the net for worldwide distribution, for $9,
which includes a $7 floppy disk.]
I don't understand the upset.
If you make something that is in the public domain (as legally defined),
this means that you relinquish ownership and give ownership to "the public".
Anyone can do anything with public domain stuff, including gulling people
into paying money for things that they can get for free.
I write public domain software myself (for the Unix community). I
write it because I want to improve the world and this is my little way
of helping. I would be glad if somebody started selling it, either as
part of their Unix system or separately. After all, if these people
can make money at it, my free distribution system is clearly not
reaching everybody, so they are actually doing me a service by
spreading my product far and wide.
If you want to make money at software, don't give it away for free!
If you give it away for free, don't complain if people copy it for fees,
sell it, or even (gasp!) fix bugs and offer support to customers who buy it.
Now software comes in all different categories these days. Much stuff
that is claimed to be "public domain" is actually not. It contains a
copyright notice and a note that anyone can redistribute it. Sometimes
there are conditions on this. I call this stuff "freely redistributable"
and it's almost as good as PD, if it comes without screwy conditions.
I think that anybody writing stuff to give away should get their
motives clear before they start. Are you trying to improve the world?
Trying to put your name before the public? Giving away a brain damaged
version of something you will commercialize? Seeing how far you can
push the hardware and are proud of how far you got? Be sure what you
want, and then set up your copyright (if any) and conditions (if any)
to make it happen.
It happens that I have a copy of Hack 1.0.1 for the Amiga here; it came
over the net and I saved it. I looked in the source to check the
copyrights. Just about every module is copyrighted by this notice:
/* Copyright (c) Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam, 1984. */
One module, hack.graphics.c, is:
/* Copyright (c) John A. Toebes, VIII 1986 */
There are no indications about whether it can be redistributed, but the
fact that it was posted to the Usenet originally (before John's port)
and then he posted it again, would weigh heavily in a court.
Technically the Stichting Mathematisch Centrum owns the work, so they
could complain about this Hack being sold, but John can only control
the distribution of his one module. I presume that if The Public Domain
Connection really wanted to make a product out of it, they could rewrite
that one file; it's only about 2K of source.
In summary, John has a copyright on a small bit of the code. He wants
to use this as leverage to control whether a company (which sounds like
a one man operation) can distribute the whole piece of publicly
available software, to people who aren't lucky enough to be on Usenet
and don't want to pay for Compuserve or don't belong to a user's
group. He doesn't want to sell it himself, he doesn't mind "friends"
selling it, but he minds "random people" selling it, or he is unwilling
for it to be sold for $9 to the same people who could get it for $8
from his friends. He neglects to mention in his flame that 99% of the
work was done by other people, who freely gave their efforts to him and
everyone else. He has a slight legal leg to stand on, but personally I
think is confused about what he wants and should think about it before
he flames again, or ports any other software around. I think his
statement "It is people like this that are working to destroy what
freeware/shareware/public domain is all about" applies more to himself
than to The Public Domain Connection.
By the way. I maintain a large (160MB) archive of public domain
software. It's a hell of a lot of work to maintain this and keep it up
to date with all the new software and new releases, index it, keep
backup copies, etc, not to mention the cost of the disk space it
takes. If I was in a commercial mood I might feel like offering a
redistribution service to the public. I currently scan
net.wanted.sources and help people out for free. But if I really tried
to recover my costs, I'd charge a lot more then $2 plus media cost!
Hell, I charge my consulting clients $120/hr and the rates go UP for
shitwork like maintaining aging software, copying disks and tapes, etc.
If you are really interested in a well thought out rationale for "why I
am putting this software into the world" and a set of conditions that
match, see the GNU Manifesto and GNU copying rules. You don't have to
agree with Richard Stallman to appreciate that he knows what he is doing
and why he is doing it -- and how to get there. I can send you a copy
if you want one.
--
John Gilmore {sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu jgilmore@lll-crg.arpa
"I can't think of a better way for the War Dept to spend money than to
subsidize the education of teenage system hackers by creating the Arpanet."hull@hao.UUCP (Howard Hull) (11/08/86)
In article <1264@hoptoad.uucp>, gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) writes: > [Net.sources.d folks, see <212@sas.UUCP> for context. John Toebes is > upset that The Public Domain Software Connection is selling "his" version > of Hack, which he posted to the net for worldwide distribution, for $9, > which includes a $7 floppy disk.] > > I don't understand the upset. I do. I even have a way to make sure that you will, too. I'll just go through all my USENET tapes until I find something YOU wrote, add a bunch of really great code, complete with whatever bugs just come naturally, and then I'll make sure I don't delete YOUR telephone number from it. Of course, I'll also make sure that it doesn't have mine. Of course, I'm not serious about what I just said; I wouldn't ever do that to you, John. But now I do wonder: can you get somebody for anguish caused to you by their publishing YOUR telephone number in a privately distributed document? Hmmmmn... Howard Hull [If yet unproven concepts are outlawed in the range of discussion... ...Then only the deranged will discuss yet unproven concepts] {ucbvax!hplabs | decvax!noao | mcvax!seismo | ihnp4!seismo} !hao!hull