Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!wuarchive!udel!haven.umd.edu!uvaarpa!murdoch!fuggles.acc.Virginia.EDU!mer6g
From: mer6g@fuggles.acc.Virginia.EDU (Marc Rouleau)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mush
Subject: Re: X version of mush?
Message-ID: <1991May7.081436@fuggles.acc.Virginia.EDU>
Date: 7 May 91 12:14:36 GMT
References: <12641@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> <1991May6.121505.11107@cs.hope.edu> <21041@ogicse.ogi.edu>
Sender: usenet@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU
Reply-To: marc@Virginia.EDU
Organization: UVa Academic Computing
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schaefer@ogicse.ogi.edu (Barton E. Schaefer) writes:
>Copyrights only cover what you've done to code you give to someone else.

Unfortunately, with software it is often unclear what defines "someone
else".  If the copy that you modify belongs to your employer, what
constitutes purely local use?  What are the boundaries of the organization?

For example, I am an employee of the Commonwealth of Virginia.  I
was hired by the University of Virginia, a "subsidiary" of that
Commonwealth.  I work for the Academic Computing Center, a department
within UVa.  If I modify mush on my employer's behalf (whomever that
is), where might the resulting executable be used?  How about the
modified source code?

>You're allowed to rip pages out of books or scribble your crib notes
>in the margins; you just aren't allowed make a bunch of copies and pass
>them out, either before or after you make those notes or rip those pages.

But you *are* allowed to publish your crib notes with instructions
regarding which pages to rip out and which to annotate.

Likewise, I think that the distribution of input to patch(1) is not
prohibited by copyright law unless the patches quote too liberally
(whatever *that* means) from the copyrighted source code which is
the object of the patches.

    -- Marc Rouleau