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From: chuq%plaid@Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: COPYRIGHT NOTICES
Message-ID: <25095@sun.uucp>
Date: Fri, 7-Aug-87 01:17:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.25095
Posted: Fri Aug  7 01:17:50 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 9-Aug-87 02:39:35 EDT
References: <6236@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: chuq@sun.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
Organization: Fictional Reality, uLtd
Lines: 31

In article <6236@brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) writes:
>I've seen a lot of software posted to comp.sources.* recently
>that include (attempted) Copyright notices.  I don't know what
>the point of including such notices in broadcast code is, but
>I've just been tossing it since if the copyright is legal I
>cannot make a copy of it to compile, etc.  Please cut it out!

I'm not sure I agree with this at all.  Some of the copyright notices are
definitely bogus -- if you're going to try to protect your code instead of
release it into the public domain, at least learn enough of the legal
mumbo-jumbo to do it right.  All you're doing otherwise is putting it into
the public domain without knowing it, which can be quite embarassing down
the road.

But some of the copyright notices I've seen are quite reasonable.  Adl, for
instance, is copyrighted with full permission to use and distribute except
for commercial gain.  Now, we can argue commercial gain all we want (if I
port it to the Mac and sell it to a publisher, I break the copright, but
what if I simply port it to a Sun and put it on our distribution tapes? Is
that STILL commercial gain?  I don't plan on it, because it isn't clear...)

My cut on this is that stuff shuold be put into the public domain unless
there is a clear reason not to (adl, for instance, has interesting
possibilities...).  But simply because it is on the broadcast net don't
assume that the copyright is invalid.  And if the copyright restrictions are
unreasonable, either toss the code or talk to the author about it.

chuq
Chuq Von Rospach	chuq@sun.COM		Delphi: CHUQ

We live and learn, but not the wiser grow -- John Pomfret (1667-1703)