Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!lll-winken!uunet!tektronix!psueea!psu-cs.cs.pdx.edu!bartonr
From: bartonr@psu-cs.cs.pdx.edu (Amiga 1000)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: PD Disks
Message-ID: <1063@psueea.UUCP>
Date: 22 Apr 89 11:05:37 GMT
Sender: news@psueea.UUCP
Reply-To: bartonr@psu-cs.cs.pdx.edu (Amiga 1000)
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, Portland State University; Portland OR
Lines: 15

In article <38944@bbn.COM> dnye@mikey.bbn.com (David Nye) writes:
>   That's just the point, PD is suposed to be non-profit by definition.  These
>companies are trying to make a profit by selling the disks not as a SERVICE to
>the AMIGA community, such as Fred FISH, but for profit.  I can not blame them
>for wanting to make a profit, but PD, by definition, should only FREELY
>distributed, not SOLD for PROFIT at the expence of Joe Programmer who was
  
  I think by definition PD means "in the domain of the public".  Think of
songs that are PD (I believe "House of the Rising Sun" is one) - anyone can
record their own version, release it, sell it, perform it, whatever.  As for
"freely distributable", I take that to mean distributable without restriction,
not distributable without charge.  I think a lot of confusion is caused by the
fact that the magazines that sell these disks refer to everything they sell as
"public domain", which may not be true.  An article in the May AmigaWorld also
implied that everything on PLink was public domain, which is not the case.