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From: new@ee.udel.edu (Darren New)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re:  NoiseTracker V2.0 out!
Message-ID: <27292@nigel.ee.udel.edu>
Date: 13 Aug 90 12:59:31 GMT
References: <9008111912.AA01990@jade.berkeley.edu> <26554@usc.edu>
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In article <26554@usc.edu> papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa) writes:
>This is known as "modification of pre-existing
>material", and all rights on the modifications are maintained by the
>original author.  
>-- Marco

But what if all the 'hackers' modifying the code bought their own copies?
If I buy a commercial program, modify it for myself, and then only give
away the modifications to those who prove that they bought the original,
I don't know that that is illegal. 

I dealt with a company that added 8087 support to Microsoft's BASIC compiler
this way. If you send them $$$ and the original disk, they would return
the disk with a new version of the compiler (clearly a modification of
the original, and not any kind of rewrite) that would drive the 8087
directly for floating-point. It seems to me that in this case, the
modifications do not belong to Microsoft, and that the new version of
the compiler actually belongs to both Microsoft *and* the other company
(whose name I forget); hence the need for the original disk. Can you
clarify this, Marco?  What if the mods to SoundTracker were distributed
as a patch file instead of the whole program?  Then it seems the hackers
would retain the rights to the modifications, yes?   -- Darren

-- 
--- Darren New --- Grad Student --- CIS --- Univ. of Delaware ---