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From: BAXTER_A@wehi.dn.mu.oz
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: CDTV FRED FISH (long)
Message-ID: <10935@wehi.dn.mu.oz>
Date: 6 Aug 90 17:44:42 GMT
References: <1827@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca> <104482@convex.convex.com> <1-7$V$+@masalla.fulcrum.bt.co.uk> <5508@uwm.edu> <26477@snow-white.udel.EDU> <26b8e0d4.6390@petunia.CalPoly.EDU> <1990Aug3.044002.18170@IRO.UMontreal.CA> <1990Aug3.052102.18491@IRO.UMontreal.ca> <kherr
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Organization: Walter & Eliza Hall Institute
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In article <kherron.649688764@s.ms.uky.edu>, kherron@ms.uky.edu (Kenneth Herron) writes:
> It always amazes me how hard it is for people to grasp the idea of
> public domain software...
> 
> martin@IRO.UMontreal.CA (Daniel Martin) writes:
> 
>>   With all this, I forgot the real questions though: PD on fish can be FREELY 
>>distributed.  Making people pay, even 30$ for a collection of
>>360 PD discs, can cause you problem right?  How does Fred Fish fixed the 5$
>>fee for the Fish disks?  Can he actually be sued by someone who can prove that
>>he had made even 1 cents on each disks? 
> 
> "Can be freely distributed" doesn't mean "has to be."  Public domain means
> NOBODY OWNS IT and ANYONE CAN DO ANYTHING WITH IT.  Let me repeat that:
> 
> ---> Nobody owns it and anyone can do anything with it. <---

The fish collection is not (all) public domain.
Nobody can do anything with it unless the actions meet all the distribution
requirements of the programs included.

> 
> Mr. Fish can charge $1000 per disk, patch every program to say "This is a
> Fred Fish Production" and he WOULDN'T BE BREAKING ANY LAWS!  You, Mr. 
> Martin, could take a set of Fish disks, replace all of Fred's text with 
> your own text, and release them as "Martin Disks" at $4.50 each and you
> WOULDN'T BE BREAKING ANY LAWS!  You could also run off copies of those
> Fish disks and give them away on street corners and you WOULDN'T BE 
> BREAKING ANY LAWS!

You would. And my law suit would hit you so hard and so fast your head
would spin.


> 
>>   If Commodore is distributing it with it's machine, can people
>>sue them for making money out of PD (on the proof that people buy more
>>Amiga when the CD's is in the package - or something to that effect) ?
> 
> It's not illegal to make money from public domain software.  If Commodore
> or Fred Fish or you or I decided to sell disks containing PD software,
> that's okay.

Again: Fred does not sell public domain discs. He distributes as a service
discs of software which is freely distributable.


  None of us would have to get permission from the author or
> from each other.  Anyone else who had copies of the software we sold,
> INCLUDING OUR CUSTOMERS, could also sell copies of it OR GIVE THEM AWAY.
> Because none of us own any rights to the software.
> 

I own the rights to my software.

> Reality check:  Not everything I've said is strictly true, because not all
> of the software on Fish disks is public domain.

Not much is, these days.

  If Fred Fish were to
> patch a copyrighted-but-freely-distributable or shareware program, he
> *would* be breaking the law (at least if he then put it on a fish disk).
> If you rereleased Fish disks as Martin disks you'd probably have a problem
> with the distribution terms on one of the copyrighted programs.  Commodore
> would have the same problem, though I'm sure they'd check it out first.
> 
> One last thought:  $30 for the equivalent of 360 disks of software sounds
> quite reasonable to me.  That's less than 1/10 the cost of those 360 disks.
> 
I think the current price is something like $1000

Regards Alan


> Kenneth Herron