greim@sbsvax.UUCP (Michael Greim) (02/26/88)
I have a question concerning copyright. In the course of a project I used curses for screen management. I got so fed up with its bugs and inabilities that I decided to extend it. This was no legal problem because we have a source license for BSD 4.* for VAX. When I finished I realized I had written a totally new product. My question is : can I sell this new thing of mine ? Or does it depend on any copyrights on curses and if so, whose ? To clarify: I call my product "CURRY". This reminds one of "CURSES" and also suggests a certain "newness" and difference. (And I couldn't come up with something better, and now I am stuck with it. :-# ) The library /usr/lib/curry has 79558 byte compared to original 35450 of /usr/lib/curses. I have changed the window structure some, and extended the functionality. With CURRY you can use up to 4 attributes to your characters, you can take them from up to 4 character sets. With new termcap entries you can specify those commands, you can set graphic symbols to use in line drawing. I implemented pull-up menus and a window manager which is part of the library. The refresh routines work some terminal functions which have not been used up-to-then, like 'change scrolling region', 'scroll up', 'scroll down' ... I added error routines which give you sensible messages in addition to the usual return values. New functions are for instance : scrollup, scrolldown, wchange (to change an attribute on a region on the screen), wrectangle (which allows you to box a portion of your window), ... And I removed some bugs from curses. The core of CURRY is CURSES all right, but I made changes in almost every routine. And I kept some stuff just to be a little bit compatible (ain't that like 'a little pregnant' ? :-). CURRY is implemented and kicking (fully legally !) on VAX 4.3BSD, SUN and a VAX running ULTRIX. Any responses are welcome. Thanx in advance. Michael +------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | UUCP: ...!uunet!unido!sbsvax!greim | Michael T. Greim | | or greim@sbsvax.UUCP | Universitaet des Saarlandes | | CSNET: greim%sbsvax.uucp@Germany.CSnet| FB 10 - Informatik (Dept. of CS) | | ARPA: greim%sbsvax.uucp@uunet.UU.NET | Bau 36, Im Stadtwald 15 | | Phone: +49 681 302 2434 | D-6600 Saarbruecken 11, West Germany | +------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | "And as the sun pulls away from the shore and our boat sinks slowly in the | | west ..." Spike Jones | +------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
drears@ardec.arpa (Dennis G. Rears (FSAC)) (02/28/88)
Mike: No you can't copyright it. What CURRY is a derivative work of Curses. Since it is not only based on Curses but uses some of the same code it is not copyrightable. If curses was public domain you could copyright the changes to Curses. You could always buy a license from AT&T to sell sell your enhanced version. If you would have taken the idea of curses and wrote everything from scratch then you could copyright it. Either way if money is involved see a lawyer before any final decisions are made. Dennis
gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) (02/28/88)
In article <452@sbsvax.UUCP> greim@sbsvax.UUCP (Michael Greim) writes: >The core of CURRY is CURSES all right, but I made changes in almost >every routine. And I kept some stuff just to be a little bit compatible ... This is really a question of "trade secret", not of copyright. Since you based your implementation on detailed knowledge of a trade secret, you're supposed to be bound by the terms of the agreement you (or your installation) signed regarding such trade secrets. Sorry..
chris@trantor.umd.edu (Chris Torek) (02/28/88)
>In article <452@sbsvax.UUCP> greim@sbsvax.UUCP (Michael Greim) writes: >>The core of CURRY is CURSES all right, but I made changes in almost >>every routine. And I kept some stuff just to be a little bit compatible ... In article <7369@brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn) writes: >This is really a question of "trade secret", not of copyright. Well now, that depends on with which curses library Michael started. While I would advise him to check further first, I believe that the one by Kenneth C. R. C. Arnold has been released into the public domain. (Perhaps Ken will comment further.) If, on the other hand, CURRY is based on Mark Horton's curses, I would imagine Doug is right. -- In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Computer Science, +1 301 454 7163 (still on trantor.umd.edu because mimsy is not yet re-news-networked) Domain: chris@mimsy.umd.edu Path: ...!uunet!mimsy!chris
steve@crcmar.crc.uucp (Steve Ardron) (03/09/88)
In response to someone's questions about selling a product heavily based on another, possibly copyrighted product. You might want to try selling your modifications back to the original designers, probably getting you a flat payment, but maybe a percentage of royalties. This would get around any possible copyright difficulties, and saves you the problem or marketing etc., that is assuming you made some modifications they are interested in. Where I heard of this being done before, a company got >$10K for some work that took a week or two of a consultants time (granted the consultant costed them around $5K, but they wanted the changes made anyway). Just a thought, Stevie.