🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <378@wang.UUCP>, ephraim@wang.UUCP (pri=8 Ephraim Vishniac x76659 ms 014 590) writes:
> In article <16819@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>, munson@ernie.Berkeley.EDU (Ethan Munson) writes:
> > Selling non-copyrighted material is legal at any price.  It's the
> > same as selling books by Dickens.  You charge what the traffic will bear.
> > 
> > Ethan Munson
> 
> But most shareware *is* copyright material.  And much of it comes with
> explicit conditions of use and distribution, which are blithely ignored
> by people who make a business of redistributing PD/freeware/shareware.

If it's public domain, not so.

Public domain software cannot be restricted.  Public domain and copyright
are mutually exclusive.  (I once, when young and foolish, put a copyright
notice in a program that I also declare public domain.  It doesn't parse.)
Putting something in the public domain is, I believe, equivalent to stating
that you lose control over it.

---
Paul DuBois     UUCP: {allegra,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!dubois    |
                ARPA: dubois@easter                               --+--
                      dubois@rhesus                                 |
                                                                    |
"Don't we have enough madmen around here already?"
                                 I Samuel 21:15