🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <8611020148.AA08257@cory.Berkeley.EDU>, dillon@CORY.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon) writes:
> 
> 	Along the same lines, another way to combat such companies is to
> simply make it unprofitable for them to sell it...  Perhaps we could all
> ban together and put in an add in AmigaWord along side the company's add
> saying 'Hack V... etc... Public Domain and FREE'.

I think Matt is on the right track here. Why not take a few
contributions to get the ball rolling (ie post an address and
Ill send some money) then include in the price of the Fish disks
enough extra charge to cover adds in the prominent AMIGA magazines
for freeware.

Along different lines...

THanks much Matt for the code it compiled happily.
Two comments though: Do you know if POPCLI is incompatible with your shell?
Whenever I try to run it I get an error message, something like cant open
new cli and then I crash shortly thereafter. Too bad I find that program
useful. Do you have any plans to implement ^Z and &, forground-background
in your shell?

Secondly, why do I run into problems when I merely try to cat a .login
file that has a fatal error whereas I can edit it?

Your documentation is quite clear and your shell is wonderful.
Thanks for all your contributions to netland.

rochester!ur-cvsvax!jea

In article <8611020148.AA08257@cory.Berkeley.EDU> dillon@CORY.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon) writes:
>
> ....
>	Along the same lines, another way to combat such companies is to
>simply make it unprofitable for them to sell it...  Perhaps we could all
>ban together and put in an add in AmigaWord along side the company's add
>saying 'Hack V... etc... Public Domain and FREE'.  We would end up spending
>very little and the company quite a bit (on their adds).
>
> ....

Count me in for contributing to the cost of such an ad.  The people
resposible for making money off of PD s/w should be hung by their
eylids until they die from lack of sleep.
How many others out there in net-land would contribute to bashing these
folks?  C'mon, let's do it!

/John  --  {wherever}!sun!elxsi!embos!wilkes

I have expanded the distribution to include net.legal since I think this
case represents something that many have anticipated for some time and
will be of interest and concern to many people outside the amiga area.
I was tempted but refrained from including other micro groups.  Perhaps
we can summarize what develops for those groups a little later.

To recap for those who are seeing this for the first time:

A company which redistributes PD software for profit is distributing an
adaptation of "Hack" for the Amiga.

The author of the adaptation, whose name and phone number appear in the
software being distributed, has contacted the company and asked them to
stop distributing the software.  They offered to make a business
arrangement but have not done so at this time and the author is, for a
number of reasons, not really interested in making a deal.

The author has contacted AmigaWorld and asked them to refuse advertisements
which feature "Hack".  They have said they will continue to accept ads
until they are shown a court order stating that the company cannot sell
the program.

The author's posting asked for suggestions on available remedies and listed
those he was considering.


I am focusing my remarks on what his legal remedies might be. Some
suggestions of other remedies have been made and may well be the best
course of action.

The first legal step would seem to be establishing that the author does
have a legal ownership of the software.  This probably means a proper
copyright.  If he does not have a proper copyright, he may be able to
remedy the copyright.  There are a number of good books that cover how to
secure a valid copyright.  I have read and would recommend Remer's Legal
Care for Your Software from Nolo Press (about $20).

I believe there are a number of pre-suit steps that can be taken to let
someone know you are serious about defending your copyright.  I also
believe that it is correct that you must undertake the defense of your own
copyright.  I defer to the books or to someone more knowledgeable for
details here.

The real crux of the legal problem as I see it is that authors who wish to
make a true PD contribution, a selfless donation of software to the
computing community, have no economic support to use for defense of a
copyright.  Is a copyright that is not being used to protect an economic
position worthless?  The pat answer for prevention of profiteering on PD
work has been copyright.  Now we have an opportunity to see if it will
work.  How should one defend a copyright given that there is no source of
money for the defense?

The only legal solution I can think of is the use of small claims court.
This minimizes, but does not eliminate, the economic hardship placed on the
PD copyright holder.  It also prevents the PD profiteer from gaining much
advantage from his economically superior position, although he still has an
advantage.  Would anyone care to comment on whether copyright infringement
could be brought to small claims court and how it might be most effectively
persued?

Disclaimers: These are personal opinions.  They are in no way associated
with my employer, the Rand Corp.  I am not an attorney and nothing
contained in this message should be considered as legal advice.

I'm not sure that a copyright needs to be protecting financial interests.
Couldn't it simply be that an author wants to have a say in what people do
with his/her work?  The GNU system is protected by a copyright stipulation
which explicitly states that you are *NOT* allowed to make money selling GNU or
a derivative work.  Yuo may only charge distribution costs, and may not
interfere in *any* way with what people do with it later.  (This includes 
forbidding liscencing agreements, copy protection, and (I *love* this) keeping
the source code private.)

I'm sure Richard Stallman looked into the pertinent legalities, and didn't find
any problems.  (Or he'd do something else (maybe charging a penny for it).)

Would anyone with more background in the subject like to comment on this?

         -Colin Plumb (ccplumb@watnot.UUCP)

"Bugs:  This man page is confusing."

[Net.sources.d folks, see <212@sas.UUCP> for context.  John Toebes is
upset that The Public Domain Software Connection is selling "his" version
of Hack, which he posted to the net for worldwide distribution, for $9,
which includes a $7 floppy disk.]

I don't understand the upset.

If you make something that is in the public domain (as legally defined),
this means that you relinquish ownership and give ownership to "the public".
Anyone can do anything with public domain stuff, including gulling people
into paying money for things that they can get for free.

I write public domain software myself (for the Unix community).  I
write it because I want to improve the world and this is my little way
of helping.  I would be glad if somebody started selling it, either as
part of their Unix system or separately.  After all, if these people
can make money at it, my free distribution system is clearly not
reaching everybody, so they are actually doing me a service by
spreading my product far and wide.

If you want to make money at software, don't give it away for free!
If you give it away for free, don't complain if people copy it for fees,
sell it, or even (gasp!) fix bugs and offer support to customers who buy it.

Now software comes in all different categories these days.  Much stuff
that is claimed to be "public domain" is actually not.  It contains a
copyright notice and a note that anyone can redistribute it.  Sometimes
there are conditions on this.  I call this stuff "freely redistributable"
and it's almost as good as PD, if it comes without screwy conditions.

I think that anybody writing stuff to give away should get their
motives clear before they start.  Are you trying to improve the world?
Trying to put your name before the public?  Giving away a brain damaged
version of something you will commercialize?  Seeing how far you can
push the hardware and are proud of how far you got?  Be sure what you
want, and then set up your copyright (if any) and conditions (if any)
to make it happen.

It happens that I have a copy of Hack 1.0.1 for the Amiga here; it came
over the net and I saved it.  I looked in the source to check the
copyrights.  Just about every module is copyrighted by this notice:
	/* Copyright (c) Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam, 1984. */
One module, hack.graphics.c, is:
	/* Copyright (c) John A. Toebes, VIII 1986 */
There are no indications about whether it can be redistributed, but the
fact that it was posted to the Usenet originally (before John's port)
and then he posted it again, would weigh heavily in a court.
Technically the Stichting Mathematisch Centrum owns the work, so they
could complain about this Hack being sold, but John can only control
the distribution of his one module.  I presume that if The Public Domain
Connection really wanted to make a product out of it, they could rewrite
that one file; it's only about 2K of source.

In summary, John has a copyright on a small bit of the code.  He wants
to use this as leverage to control whether a company (which sounds like
a one man operation) can distribute the whole piece of publicly
available software, to people who aren't lucky enough to be on Usenet
and don't want to pay for Compuserve or don't belong to a user's
group.  He doesn't want to sell it himself, he doesn't mind "friends"
selling it, but he minds "random people" selling it, or he is unwilling
for it to be sold for $9 to the same people who could get it for $8
from his friends.  He neglects to mention in his flame that 99% of the
work was done by other people, who freely gave their efforts to him and
everyone else.  He has a slight legal leg to stand on, but personally I
think is confused about what he wants and should think about it before
he flames again, or ports any other software around.  I think his
statement "It is people like this that are working to destroy what
freeware/shareware/public domain is all about" applies more to himself
than to The Public Domain Connection.

By the way.  I maintain a large (160MB) archive of public domain
software.  It's a hell of a lot of work to maintain this and keep it up
to date with all the new software and new releases, index it, keep
backup copies, etc, not to mention the cost of the disk space it
takes.  If I was in a commercial mood I might feel like offering a
redistribution service to the public.  I currently scan
net.wanted.sources and help people out for free.  But if I really tried
to recover my costs, I'd charge a lot more then $2 plus media cost!
Hell, I charge my consulting clients $120/hr and the rates go UP for
shitwork like maintaining aging software, copying disks and tapes, etc.

If you are really interested in a well thought out rationale for "why I
am putting this software into the world" and a set of conditions that
match, see the GNU Manifesto and GNU copying rules.  You don't have to
agree with Richard Stallman to appreciate that he knows what he is doing
and why he is doing it -- and how to get there.  I can send you a copy
if you want one.
-- 
John Gilmore  {sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu   jgilmore@lll-crg.arpa
    "I can't think of a better way for the War Dept to spend money than to
  subsidize the education of teenage system hackers by creating the Arpanet."

In article <12158@watnot.UUCP> ccplumb@watnot.UUCP (Colin Plumb) writes:
>I'm not sure that a copyright needs to be protecting financial interests.

Last night, here at U of W, there was a lecture given by a rather knowledgable
lawyer on topics relating to software.  Most of the lecture was related to an 
engineers liablility with respect to the use, and design of software, but
he also spoke about software protection.

During the software protection part of the talk I posed exactly the question
under discussion here to him.  He said "The copyright would still be valid 
even on a piece of freely distibutable software."  Basically the copyright
gives the owner the power of dictating who, and under what terms a piece
of intellectual property (most commonly in written form. Canada's copyright
laws don't specifically mention software YET.) can be reproduced/distributed.
This means that if someone wants to copy a PD program, unless it contains
a notice saying that anyone can copy it, then, theoretically, it would still
be necessary to get the author's permission.  

Another way of stating this is that as well as a copyright notice, PD software
should list the allowable terms of distribution, in addition to a copyright
notice.  Otherwise nobody is really alowed to copy/distribute it legally.

This seemed to make good sense to me.

Mike Wingrove
C. C. N. G.
Dept of Elec. Eng.
U of Waterloo

In article <383@ur-cvsvax.UUCP> jea@ur-cvsvax.UUCP (Joanne Albano) writes:
>In article <8611020148.AA08257@cory.Berkeley.EDU>, dillon@CORY.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon) writes:
>> 
>> 	Along the same lines, another way to combat such companies is to
>> simply make it unprofitable for them to sell it...  Perhaps we could all
>> ban together and put in an add in AmigaWord along side the company's add
>> saying 'Hack V... etc... Public Domain and FREE'.
>
>I think Matt is on the right track here. Why not take a few
>contributions to get the ball rolling (ie post an address and
>Ill send some money) then include in the price of the Fish disks
>enough extra charge to cover adds in the prominent AMIGA magazines
>for freeware.
>

I agree with the idea that we should run ads, and I'll send a few bucks as
well as asking our local users group (CAMEO) to pitch in.

I don't think Matt should give up on the legal route however. Since he has
asked them nice not to do it, and as I assume the software is publicly
redistributable, not public domain (there is a difference, if you don't
want to allow people to rip you off like this LEAGALLY always include a
copyright notice, with a declaration of intent that the work be freely
redistributed on a not-for-profit basis.), he has REAL solid ground for
a law suit. Since the case is so strong, and since copyright suits are
triple damages (plus punative, I believe) I would be suprised if there
weren't lawyers falling all over themselves to handle it for a cut of the
settlement.

I would strongly suggest contacting your local chapter of The American
Society of Journalists and Authors, or a similar national writers group as
they can give you lost of good advice about how to handle it and which lawyers
to use. If you want to mail me your city, Matt, I can look up where the
nearest ASJA chapter is and get back to you.

Assholes like the ones in question should be taken to the cleaners, its the
onlything they learn from!

Jeff Kesselman
ihnp4!uwvax!puff!uhura!captain
or just uhura!captain for mailers who know about published names.

Important Disclaimer:
I am not a lawyer, nor do I attempt to give leagal advice. I'm just the son
of nationally syndicated journalists, and I've grown up hearing ALL about
copyright law at the dinner table. (Thier column, if anyone cares, is called
"The Business Computer" in most newspapers, we all have different last names
in my family... its a long story...)

In article <1264@hoptoad.uucp>, gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) writes:
> [Net.sources.d folks, see <212@sas.UUCP> for context.  John Toebes is
> upset that The Public Domain Software Connection is selling "his" version
> of Hack, which he posted to the net for worldwide distribution, for $9,
> which includes a $7 floppy disk.]
> 
> I don't understand the upset.

I do.  I even have a way to make sure that you will, too.  I'll just go
through all my USENET tapes until I find something YOU wrote, add a bunch
of really great code, complete with whatever bugs just come naturally, and
then I'll make sure I don't delete YOUR telephone number from it.  Of course,
I'll also make sure that it doesn't have mine.  Of course, I'm not serious
about what I just said; I wouldn't ever do that to you, John.  But now I do
wonder: can you get somebody for anguish caused to you by their publishing
YOUR telephone number in a privately distributed document?  Hmmmmn...

								Howard Hull
[If yet unproven concepts are outlawed in the range of discussion...
                   ...Then only the deranged will discuss yet unproven concepts]
	{ucbvax!hplabs | decvax!noao | mcvax!seismo | ihnp4!seismo} !hao!hull