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From: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Selling of free software
Message-ID: <7268@star.cs.vu.nl>
Date: 9 Aug 90 12:10:59 GMT
References: <6--4A8C@xds13.ferranti.com> <1990Aug8.173146.1206@santra.uucp> <meulenbr.650184899@cst>
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In article <meulenbr.650184899@cst> meulenbr@cst.philips.nl (Frans Meulenbroeks) writes:
>Hmm. I'm not a lawyer, but I think PH only holds copyright to part of
>the sources, and a compilation copyright to the rest of the stuff.
>If you contribute a program with a copyright notice allowing unlimited
>distribution, PH will surely respect it, and people can take it off
>the MINIX disks without any problems

This is correct.  If you post a program and put in an explicit message that
it is in the public domain, then no one can get it out of the public domain.
Anyone can modify it (even a single character) and then copyright the modified
version and prevent anyone from using THAT version, but the original remains
in the public domain.  Once pubic domain, always public domain.

I would suggest that people who post software and intend it to be in the
public domain, put in a notice to that effect.  That way people who want to
sell it (e.g. P-H) can do so, but they cannot prevent anyone else from
doing what they want, including giving it away free.  The GNU copyleft, which
creates legal obligations on the part of anyone selling it, causes lawyers
to go into infinite loops.  Statements that something is simultaneously
copyright and public domain (see du.c) make as much sense as the law passed
by the Indiana State Legislature around 1890 saying that in Indiana pi was
legally exactly 3.0.

Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl)