Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!iuvax!mailrus!sharkey!itivax!scs
From: scs@itivax.iti.org (Steve C. Simmons)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: libg++ and copylefts
Message-ID: <2219@itivax.iti.org>
Date: 18 Jul 89 17:13:51 GMT
References: <799@redsox.bsw.com> <6590194@hplsla.HP.COM> <318@gt-eedsp.gatech.edu> <2053@dataio.Data-IO.COM> <42888@bbn.COM>
Organization: Industrial Technology Institute, Ann Arbor, MI.
Lines: 32

jgrace@bbn.com (Joe Grace) writes:

>I'm not sure this approach would really work in general since GNU can
>take software from *PUBLIC DOMAIN* and incorporate it under their
>copyleft restrictions.  Someone pointed out how FSF seems to have
>taken some government subsidized code, copylefted it, and taken over
>maintenance of the code --- thereby killing the code's *PUBLIC DOMAIN*
>availability and utility.  (We're talking hoarding here, folks.)

You can copyright *a particular instantiation* of public domain
anything (not just code).  For example, the Beach Boys performance
of "Sloop John B" is no less valid just because the song is in the
public domain.  All the copyright does is protect your ownership of
your derivation.  As an example closer to our field, many CAD/CAM
companies have taken SPICE (a PD CAD program), "improved" it or
ported it to their system, and sell it.  This in no way removes SPICE
from PD, nor does the PD status of the original SPICE restrict their
instantiation.

When FSF copyrights a PD piece of code, this in no way prevents you from
using it *provided you don't get it from FSF*.  So if OOPSLIB, g++, etc,
were actually PD at some point (and I'm not saying they were) you would be
free to take a copy *of the original* and do what you please regardless of
copyleft.

And government subsidised code is not automaticly PD.  I believe NSF
(National Science Foundation) subsidised code is, but that's not where
g++ or oopslib came from.
-- 
Steve Simmons		          scs@vax3.iti.org
Industrial Technology Institute     Ann Arbor, MI.
"Velveeta -- the Spam of Cheeses!" -- Uncle Bonsai