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From: net@uwmacc.UUCP (jeff kesselman)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Re: Copyrights and Software Ripoffs
Message-ID: <483@uwmacc.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 9-Nov-86 21:04:53 EST
Article-I.D.: uwmacc.483
Posted: Sun Nov  9 21:04:53 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 9-Nov-86 22:48:53 EST
References: <8853@sun.uucp> <220@sas.UUCP> <2228@ecsvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: net@uwmacc.UUCP (jeff kesselman)
Distribution: net
Organization: UWisconsin-Madison Academic Comp Center
Lines: 33
Keywords: Copyright notice and banding together

In article <2228@ecsvax.UUCP> bet@ecsvax.UUCP (Bennett E. Todd III) writes:
>In article <220@sas.UUCP> walker@sas.UUCP (Doug Walker) writes:
>> [...]  How about some legal eagle out there coming up with an appropriate
>> statment which allows distribution on a not-for-profit basis while retaining
>> the author's copyright?
>
>It's been done. The Free Software Foundation (whence cometh GNU; RMS's
>current pet project) distributes software with a fairly lengthy
>preamble; it asserts Copyright, then explicitly grants permission for
>redistribution with restrictions designed to keep anybody from abusing
>it.
>

Could we prevail upon someone from FSF to post thier statement, in fill in the
blank form, to save the rest of us the research time of designing one,
and the expense of having a lawyer then double check it (I assume FSF has
already done this) ??

I thought just occurred to me. There are a number of national freelance
writer's organizations (as I've mentioned before) that exist primarily to
protect their members from unscrupulous publishers and the like. Wouldn't
it make sense to form such an association of freelance software authors/
PD software authors either as a seperate organization or as a sub-organization
of one of these? Actually, forming such a guild might not be any more
difficult than creating a new news group. Any thoughts?

Jeff Kesselman
ihnp4!uwvax!puff!uhura!captain
(for bright mailers, uhura has a published path)

"I'd be writting PD software, if I had enough time left after school to be
 writing anything!"
				me.