ldm@mtuxo.att.com (the wharf rat) (10/22/88)
Suppose that a programmer for a large && not entirely well-liked company was asked to write a program to allow the editing && subsequent mailing of a message to a list of system administrators, and suppose this programmer said to himself, "Gee, sounds *just* *like* *Pnews*, except of course I'd have to invoke the mailer... Hmmm.", and thought about _borrowing_ some code, but had second thoughts about borrowing Netnews code to use at work, even though this would be a strictly internal product && never sold for money, because he's aware that the nice people who built Netnews placed it in the public domain with the explicit request that it *not* be re-sold for money... Would you tell him "Sure, software re-use is a Good Thing, and since you're not making money directly off it and it'll never be included in a product sold to a customer", or would you tell him "Well, you *would* be using it in a commercial product of sorts, and it *might* someday be sold as part of a package - ya never know- and it owuld be easy enough to write your own anyway..." W.rat
david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) (10/24/88)
If it had been placed in the public domain, as you suggest, then
the authors would have no say over what you did with the code.
However, the netnews code is copyrighted by Rick Adams. He borrowed
the CopyLeft idea from GNU, and requires that the code be made
freely available, but otherwise not restricting use and such. Meaning
that you'd have to re-distribute the parts borrowed from news when
distributing the binaries of your hypothetical system.
Note that I am not a lawyer and that for a real answer you should
consult one. On the other hand, the copyright document in the news
distribution seems to be very good.
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