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From: dubois@uwmacc.UUCP (Paul DuBois)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Selling of Freeeware/Shareware
Message-ID: <914@uwmacc.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 20-Jan-87 10:56:18 EST
Article-I.D.: uwmacc.914
Posted: Tue Jan 20 10:56:18 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 21-Jan-87 00:17:12 EST
References: <1646@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com> <16819@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <378@wang.UUCP>
Organization: Flat Egg Software, Ltd.
Lines: 26
Keywords: PD, freeeware, shareware

In article <378@wang.UUCP>, ephraim@wang.UUCP (pri=8 Ephraim Vishniac x76659 ms 014 590) writes:
> In article <16819@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>, munson@ernie.Berkeley.EDU (Ethan Munson) writes:
> > Selling non-copyrighted material is legal at any price.  It's the
> > same as selling books by Dickens.  You charge what the traffic will bear.
> > 
> > Ethan Munson
> 
> But most shareware *is* copyright material.  And much of it comes with
> explicit conditions of use and distribution, which are blithely ignored
> by people who make a business of redistributing PD/freeware/shareware.

If it's public domain, not so.

Public domain software cannot be restricted.  Public domain and copyright
are mutually exclusive.  (I once, when young and foolish, put a copyright
notice in a program that I also declare public domain.  It doesn't parse.)
Putting something in the public domain is, I believe, equivalent to stating
that you lose control over it.

---
Paul DuBois     UUCP: {allegra,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!dubois    |
                ARPA: dubois@easter                               --+--
                      dubois@rhesus                                 |
                                                                    |
"Don't we have enough madmen around here already?"
                                 I Samuel 21:15