From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!eagle!mhtsa!alice!npoiv!npois!ucbvax!C70:info-cpm
Newsgroups: fa.info-cpm
Title: Selling Public Domain Software
Article-I.D.: ucb.1514
Posted: Wed Jul 14 20:54:46 1982
Received: Fri Jul 16 01:07:16 1982

>From SEILER@Mit-Xx Wed Jul 14 20:54:35 1982
I think the chief ripoff in selling public domain software is not the
fact that it is being sold, but the fact that the sellers apparently
do not identify the software as such.  If I take someone else's code
and modify it, I have no right to claim that it is "my code".  If I
don't even modify it, the situation is even more obviously stealing
(morally, at least, if not legally).  Of course, I know why the people
who sell public domain software don't mention that it is public domain -
people would be less likely to buy it if they knew that they could get
it for free.  Perhaps this is where a copyright notice would help.
Someone could still sell the code, but failing to include the copyright
notice would surely be a violation of the law.  And even if a buyer
didn't find out beforehand that the code was public domain, I bet he'd
(she'd/it'd) get rather bugged to see a notice "copyright 1981 J. Hacker -
this code is in the public domain" printed out when he runs the code
he just paid $200 for.  Maybe (I hope) bugged enough to take his business
to a more honest vendor.

Larry Seiler, Seiler@XX
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