Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!labrea!rutgers!mcnc!thorin!clocs!davis
From: davis@clocs.cs.unc.edu (Mark Davis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: GNU is not Public Domain (was Re: Yacc and Awk)
Summary: Gnu is not "public domain"
Keywords: copyright copyleft gnu FSF public-domain
Message-ID: <6711@thorin.cs.unc.edu>
Date: 13 Feb 89 18:00:36 GMT
References: <JANR.89Feb9101033@tum.sics.se> <3692@nicmad.UUCP>
Sender: duncanl@thorin.cs.unc.edu
Reply-To: davis@cs.unc.edu (Mark Davis)
Organization: University Of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Lines: 29

In article <3692@nicmad.UUCP> brown@nicmad.UUCP (Vidiot) writes:
>GNU Awk has just been released to the pc binaries news group.  It is public
>domain.
>-- 
>	       harvard-\	 att--\
>Vidiot            ucbvax!uwvax!astroatc!nicmad!brown
>	       rutgers-/      decvax--/
>	ARPA/INTERNET: nicmad!brown%astroatc.UUCP@spool.cs.wisc.edu

I hate to nit, but Stallman is trying hard to protect the status of
FSF's stuff.

Gnu things (like GAWK and GCC) are freely copiable but are not public
domain.  FSF has copyright and has some interesting restrictions about
what you can do with it.  For most of us, it makes it freely available,
but the rules keep somebody from going into business and making money
off of all of the volunteer work that has been done for FSF.

The reason I am using all the net-bandwidth to make this point is that
FSF must protect their copyright.  If you don't protect it, then you
open the door for theft and messy court battles.

(I have no connection with FSF except that I use their products and
hope to be able to contribute to some of them myself.  Additionally,
I have (casually) read their copyleft statements.)

Thanks for your time (and the net-bandwidth).

Thanks - Mark (davis@cs.unc.edu or uunet!mcnc!davis)