From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npoiv!npois!ucbvax!C70:info-cpm
Newsgroups: fa.info-cpm
Title: public domain software control
Article-I.D.: ucb.1508
Posted: Wed Jul 14 00:31:27 1982
Received: Thu Jul 15 03:49:19 1982

>From lauren@Ucla-Security Wed Jul 14 00:31:15 1982
I don't think the suggested "restriction" notices will serve much
purpose.  I *believe* that most such attempts at "restrictive"
definitions of "public domain" have failed when they reached court.

It's not even clear that the situation is even all that simple.
If there are piles of public domain software around, and someone decides
to collect various sorts of programs into USEFUL collections, why shouldn't
they be able to sell them?  Not everyone can afford to work for free!
If you admit that selling is OK, how can you say that THIS price is ok but
THIS price is a ripoff?  I don't understand how such determinations can
be anything but subjective -- and good luck making subjective determinations
like that work in a courtroom!

Another point:  Say that someone has a big program (say a database program)
that they want to sell (they've written it themselves).  Just to make
things easier for the users of their software, they decide to include
a number of related public domain programs with their package.  Obviously,
the whole thing has a single price.  How do you divide out the non-
public from the public-domain software in a single distribution of this
type?

The whole issue is decidedly non-trivial.

--Lauren--