Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!swbatl!texbell!ficc!peter From: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: Re: Selling of free software Message-ID: <+:258U1@xds13.ferranti.com> Date: 9 Aug 90 14:59:50 GMT References: <5414@castle.ed.ac.uk> <26259@usc.edu> <26149@nigel.udel.EDU> <6--4A8C@xds13.ferranti.com> <1990Aug8.173146.1206@santra.uucp> Reply-To: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) Organization: Xenix Support, FICC Lines: 47 In article <1990Aug8.173146.1206@santra.uucp> jkp@cs.HUT.FI (Jyrki Kuoppala) writes: > I don't mind that situation either; what I _do_ mind if I post / > publish some code to the public domain, then someone else comes and > (perhaps improving the code somewhat, perhaps deleting my name, > perhaps omiting documentation and source, perhaps doing something > else) starts selling the code so that the buyer of that program isn't > allowed to redistribute. I don't mind that either. The choice is this guy is going to use my code and be a black hole, or he's not going to use it, then I let him use it. There are people I know are using bits of my code in commercial programs. More power to them. The total intelligence of the world still rises, and nobody actually loses. And if he makes significant improvements to my code (which wasn't of commercial quality in the first place, most likely) then who am I to deny *him* the fruits of his labors? > For these reasons, if I'll make some sizable contributions to Minix > (or any other effort-taking software development for that matter), > I'll probably put them under the GNU copyright. This will pretty much guarantee that I won't use them. They will also not get into the X distribution, if they're appropriate for that (David Betz had to modify the copyright on XLISP for the Winterp distribution). There are other channels that will close off to you if you do that. You have to consider what your goals are. If it's to maximise the distribution of your software, something like the Berkeley copyright is better. > I just give them to the public domain, it easily happens that someone > takes the software and restricts it's redistribution (like happens > currently with X, X is freely available to anyone who wants it. Unenhanced X. If that's what you want, go for it. > TeX, I believe this, too, is available freely. It's just commercial quality versions, nicely shrink-wrapped and with support, that don't come for free. > [...] Berkeley version of Unix etc.) Berkeley UNIX was never "free", but they're working hard to make it so. -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' +1 713 274 5180. 'U`