Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!rutgers!caip.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!porthos.rutgers.edu!hedrick From: hedrick@porthos.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc Subject: Re: What is a Public Domain SW ? Message-ID: Date: 16 Mar 88 03:27:36 GMT References: <10361@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 54 Keywords: Public Domain Software To: basuki@CS.UCLA.EDU If software is truly public domain, you can do anything you want to with it, including charging other people for it. Note that no software with a copyright notice is public domain. By definition. Public domain means non-copyrighted. Any copyright notice that includes a statement that the software is public domain (and I have seen such) is self-contradictory. Software on public repositories is not necessarily public domain. Software in places such as Simtel-20 often falls into any of the following categories: - truly public domain - copyrighted but with a license attached that allows anyone to use and copy it - copyrighted but with a license attached that places restrictions on use and copying, such as no commerical use - copyrighted but with a license attached that requires you to pay the author if you use it. The legality of such a license is questionable, as is presence of such software in places where access occurs via government-supported networks, but it does happen. Furthermore, most repositories do not identify such software, so you may spend several hours copying it over a long-distance phone call or the Arpanet, only to find that you are going to have to pay to use it. If the software falls into any category other than the first, the author is obligated to put notifications of its status onto it in a way that you can't miss. This is typically done with a README file, and by making the program print out a notice when it is run. So in theory if there is no notice you can treat a program as public domain. However things now get sticky. If you just intend to use this thing at home or give it to a few friends, you are safe in doing so if there is no notice. However if you intend to use it for serious commerical purposes, you need to talk to a lawyer. The Rutgers lawyers warned us that it is always possible that software could have been put into a public repository by someone who was not authorized to do so. (That has happened. A proprietary program was posted to one of the binaries groups not long ago.) While we would probably not be held accountable for using a program if we had exercised reasonable care to make sure it was public domain, we could still lose. Suppose we had used such a program as the basis for some work of our own. If it turns out later that it was copyrighted, we could lose this work. The right to create derivative works is part of the bundle of rights protected by copyright. So theoretically the owner of the copyright could require us to destroy any modified version of the program that we had made. Certainly if we were creating a business, and had planned to use the program as the basis of a product, and it turned out to be copyrighted or otherwise protected, we could be in trouble. So if you intend to take any actions based on the assumption that the code is public domain, including investing significant amounts of time or money, it is likely that a lawyer would recommend getting a clear statement from the author that it is in fact public domain. Note that there are ways to protect software other than copyright, but it is unlikely that you would find any software protected in such a way (legitimately) in any public repository.