Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!purdue!iuvax!bobmon
From: bobmon@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (RAMontante)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Reason *not* to get new Borland "Turbo" releases
Summary: that's not a Borland-peculiar reason
Message-ID: <14725@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Date: 4 Nov 88 15:05:28 GMT
References: <4203@tekgvs.GVS.TEK.COM>
Reply-To: bobmon@iuvax.UUCP (RAMontante)
Organization: malkaryotic
Lines: 35

In article <4203@tekgvs.GVS.TEK.COM> toma@tekgvs.GVS.TEK.COM (Tom Almy) writes:
>	[...]
>Now: "Programs that you write using [name of product] may be used, given
>away or sold without additional license or fees, as long as all copies of 
>such programs bear a copyright notice.  By 'copyright notice,' we mean either
>your own copyright notice or, if you prefer, the statment, "Created using 
>[name of product], Copyright (c) Borland 1988.'"
>
>So if you want to write a program for the public domain, you now have to
>give Borland credit for their compiler.  No other compiler I now have
>(and I have compilers from ten other companies) place that restriction.

First of all, the material Tom quoted DOES NOT require you to give
Borland credit.  It requires you to assert that SOMEBODY owns it, and
suggests you (the author) as first choice or Borland as a default.  The
only obvious effect of this requirement is to prevent the program from
going out as public domain -- which would allow anyone else to claim it,
including parts from Borland libraries, as their own creation and
property.  This seems like a very reasonable requirement to me.

Second of all, I can easily tell MS-generated C code from Borland-
generated C code; both of them *currently* put a "(C) copyright..."
string in the executable, without bothering to mention that they're
doing it.  In fact there was a flap a while ago on the net, in which
people were worried that Microsoft was claiming their code.  MS finally
came out and said the their copyright statement didn't preclude anyone
from distributing code that used their libraries, it just meant the
libraries couldn't be redistributed as such.  Maybe Borland has decided
to do away with the automatic string?

(third of all:  my opinion is based solely on the material Tom quoted; I
may have to eat some of my words once I get a look at my upgrade...)
-- 
--    bob,mon			(bobmon@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu)
--    "Aristotle was not Belgian..."	- A Fish Called Wanda