Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!wuarchive!usc!neuro.usc.edu!annala
From: annala@neuro.usc.edu (A J Annala)
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: Actual case of hoarding public domain code?
Message-ID: <21997@usc.edu>
Date: 27 Dec 89 01:55:19 GMT
Sender: news@usc.edu
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Lines: 30

In article <702@dgis.dtic.dla.mil> jkrueger@dgis.dtic.dla.mil (Jon) writes:
>murthy@alsvid.cs.cornell.edu (Chet Murthy) writes:
>
>>University Ingres
>
>Try again.  It's freely available from postgres.berkeley.edu.
>Jonathan Krueger    jkrueger@dtic.dla.mil   uunet!dgis!jkrueger

Matlab

It's also freely available from a couple of places on the INTERNET.

But, what you have to keep in mind, is that in the case of both of these
products (ingres & matlab) the commercial developers have substantially
rewritten and enhanced the code prior to commercial release.  I have
worked with the source code version of university ingres and pd matlab
and compared both of these products to their commercial counterparts.
No one can deny the performance/reliability enhancements to university
ingres and the complete rewrite of pd matlab from the original FORTRAN
into C are significant enhancements to the original code.  No one can
retract any version of software once it is released into public domain.
However, these companies (with the participation of the original authors
of the code [stonebreaker and cleve moler]) have not ripped anyone off.
They are only selling their enhancements to the code (and support, etc)
not precluding distribution of the original public domain product.

o.k.  sometimes cleve (and ncar and others) try to call their original
public domain distribution a "limited" distribution to friends ... but
that doesn't get them anywhere once the actual facts of the original
public domain distribution come out.