Newsgroups: comp.sys.cbm
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca!mroussel
From: mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (Marc Roussel)
Subject: Re: The Law,Chips,Code......A question
Message-ID: <1991May16.210459.11425@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca>
Organization: Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto
References: <12031@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> <1991May13.104535.42722@eagle.wesleyan.edu> <1991May13.230536.3536@uoft02.utoledo.edu>
Date: Thu, 16 May 1991 21:04:59 GMT

In article <1991May13.230536.3536@uoft02.utoledo.edu> grx0644@uoft02.utoledo.edu
writes:
>I have been dabbling with the 1571 roms, trying out different mods to the roms
>(using eproms and such). I am wondering if I can sell my hypothetical UPgrade,
>would I be breaking the copy right laws since some of the code in the chip was
>not written by me?

     IBM recently won a suit against another company in similar
circumstances.  The other company (whose name excapes me) offered a
service whereby they would increase the efficiency of some crucial bit
of the OS of your IBM mainframe.  They didn't work on copies, they
worked on your own legally-owned OS tape.  (Or something like that...
I'm not sure what the precise nature of the storage medium was.)
Anyway, the courts said that they couldn't do that because they were
preparing a derivative work without the copyright owner's (IBM's)
consent and selling it.
     In practical terms, this means that you can modify your own copy of
someone else's code (fair use doctrine), but you can't sell the modifications
to anyone else.  Whether or not you can give away the result of your
labour (i.e. a set of diffs or a kit, as someone else suggested) is an
open question, as far as I know.
     If your ROM modifications are really interesting, why don't you ask
Commodore for a licence to redistribute them to legitimate owners of
original Commodore ROM's?  I'm sure that Commodore wouldn't ask for much
of a royalty, if any.  The 1571 is, after all, out of production.

				Marc R. Roussel
                                mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca