harryb@slovax.UUCP (02/12/87)
in article <210@bacchus.MIT.EDU>, rlk@athena.mit.edu (Robert L Krawitz) says: > > In article <3740@teddy.UUCP> jpn@teddy.UUCP (John P. Nelson) writes: > ]Well, not by AT&T. However, people should be aware that bison inserts > ]a copy of the GNU copyright into every generated C file. > > Last time I looked at the bison sources, I couldn't find this > "feature". I checked the include and lib files as well. Perhaps he's > taken this out by now. > Purely by accident, I found that utilizing the Microsoft C V3.0 and their subroutine library results in a string, sometimes several strings, in every .exe file marking the generated binary as "Copyright by Microsoft Corp." Doesn't this imply that Microsoft can, at some point in time, claim they own your code? Let's say that you sell all binary rights to your code to someone else, who perhaps sells it to someone else who markets it. Hundreds of thousands of copies (one can dream, can't one) eventually make their way to an end user. Since you have no interest in it, you're far removed from it by this time, and besides, your initial sales contract contains a boilerplate clause that the purchaser will indemnify you against against any copyright infringement suits. A swift run of the code through the "Microsoft Copyright Detector Filter" and Microsoft now has the at least the threat of a potential lawsuit for copyright infringement to extract (that's a nicer word than 'extort') a settlement from the successful marketer and vendor. Consider how the facts would appear to a lay jury and a non-technical judge, not how they might appear to a technical expert. I believe to them it might appear that the copyright applied to the resultant binary, not just the object code library as a separate body of work, portions of which were linked into your code. In fact, contemplation of the difficulty involved in trying to explain such distinctions to a lay jury gives me a headache. Of course, it wouldn't be practical for Microsoft to sue any but a deep pocket, and of course we all know nobody in the software industry would unethically claim another's work, but doesn't this practice seem to be a time bomb for the unwary? What do others think of this practice? How do you (or would you) like inadvertantly stamping YOUR code with THEIR copyright notice? -- ________________________________________________________________________ Harry E. Barnett {hplsla,uw-beaver}!tikal!slovax!harryb Brittanius (shocked): Caesar, this is not proper. Theodotus (outraged): How? Caesar (recovering his self possession): Pardon him, Theodotus: He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and islands are the laws of nature. --Caesar and Cleopatra, Act II, George Bernard Shaw
ekb@ho7cad.UUCP (02/17/87)
In article <280@slovax.UUCP>, harryb@slovax.UUCP (Harry E. Barnett) writes: > [Stuff on how use of Microsoft's C subroutine library results in ] > ["Copyright by Microsoft Corp." strings included in your binary. ] > [Also thoughts on whether this gives Microsoft rights to your code.] I seems to me that Microsoft does have some right to control the distribution of binaries which include object modules from their subroutine library. They do have the copyright on those modules, after all. They may have waived those rights in the license you got with the library. I'd check it if I were you. I wouldn't worry too much about a non-technical judge or jury interpreting the notice as applying to the entire binary. Explaining this is much easier that a lot of other technical subjects that must be explained to juries every day. = Eric Bustad +1-201-949-6257 (Give me a call sometime!)
ignatz@aicchi.UUCP (02/21/87)
I'd just like to point out that, no matter what may be inserted in your executable from a library or an intermediate processing step such as a linker, rights of all parties concerned are governed by the signed licensing agreement. Most agreements today explicitly allow the end-user to distribute products incorporating library routines with no royalties due the copyright holder of the library itself; in fact, I will avoid either using, or recommending to clients that they use, any development package that still has such restrictions. (In fact, most companies do prefer to avoid such complications in packages they intend to market, anyway.) I can understand their desire to tag their code with copyright information; and the courts have ruled that it must be readable. But it does gripe me that I'm paying a phenomenal memory and/or disk storage cost for such legal protection. Do a 'strings', or 'what', sometime on a System V library and the programs in /bin and /usr/bin, to see just how much you're giving of your system to their copyright protection... -- Dave Ihnat Analysts International Corporation (312) 882-4673 ihnp4!aicchi!ignatz || ihnp4!homebru!ignatz