rfm@sun.com (Rich McAllister) (12/29/89)
In the reference, I asked for actual cases of "evil software hoarders" took over some public domain code and kept others from using the original PD code. The only examples offered with enough information to deal with were Ingres, Macsyma, Gosling Emacs, and Scribe. All these have a common thread: their creators were involved with the later commercialization. In several cases, claims were made that the original free distributions were limited, apparently to shore up a retroactive claim of copyright; but no one cited a case where anyone was actually forced to stop using or distributing the original version. This leads to an interesting conclusion. Suppose the authors of these programs had released them under copyleft, with copyright assigned to FSF; by the terms of the copyleft, they could not themselves take the code and commercialize it as they did. So the copyleft seems to free the software, at the cost of restricting the freedom of the creators of the software. If I were copylefting some software, I think I'd be sure to hold the copyright in my name, and explicitly reserve the right to change the distribution conditions on derivative works created by me... but I'd probably just avoid the hassle and put it in the public domain anyway. Rich McAllister