Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!linac!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!optilink!digi!kgallagh From: kgallagh@digi.lonestar.org (Kevin Gallagher) Newsgroups: comp.sources.d Subject: Re: Rms says: Motif vs open look, a trend? Message-ID: <1991Feb14.002058.2311@digi.lonestar.org> Date: 14 Feb 91 00:20:58 GMT References: <8536@mitech.com> <13665@vpk3.UUCP> Organization: DSC Communications Corp, Plano, TX Lines: 47 In article <13665@vpk3.UUCP> craig@vpk3.ATT.COM (Craig Campbell) writes: >A copyright protects your material and IDEAS from being copied. >Obviously, if an unauthorised party has a copy of a copywritten article, >then the copyright law has been broken. > A copyright protects your "written expression" of your IDEAS, and not the IDEAS themselves. You cannot protect your ideas from being used by others via a copyright. The law is very clear on this. As applied to software, the copyright law prevents someone from making copies of your software and distributing those copies to others. However, it does NOT in any way give the author control over how the purchaser of the software uses the purchased copy of the software. Nor does it give the author legal rights to compensation if the purchaser of the software uses it to make money, even large amounts of money. And if the software purchaser likes the program and decides to write his/her own better version of the program, he/she is free to do so without giving you ANY compensation, privided that the new program is a different expression of the same idea found in your program, which is very easy to do. Remember, to violate the terms of the copyright law, one has to copy the "expression" of an idea, not the idea, itself! For example, suppose you write a fortune telling software program that you sell in retail stores for $149. Suppose you have copyrighted it. Then, John Fortune comes along and buys a copy. He is impressed and convinces ABC to let him create a TV fortune telling program in which people call in live to get their fortunes told. The program uses an IBM PC and your software to generate the fortunes for each caller. You might think that John Fortune and ABC owe you compensation for using your program to make money. However, the copyright on your software gives you no such rights to compensation. John Fortune and ABC can use your program without owing you a dime! On the other hand, if you made all purchasers of your fortune telling software sign a license BEFORE you sold them the software, then compensation terms written into the license could be enforced. But it is not the copyright law that allows this. Because it is a properly executed license, it is contract law that protects you, not copyright law. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kevin Gallagher kgallagh@digi.lonestar.org OR ...!uunet!digi!kgallagh DSC Communications Corporation Addr: MS 152, 1000 Coit Rd, Plano, TX 75075 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------