Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!vsi!friedl From: friedl@vsi.UUCP (Stephen J. Friedl) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions Subject: Re: Questions on CURSES by Pavel Curtis 1982 Summary: Watch it! Public domain *cannot* be copyrighted Keywords: curses CURSES copyright Message-ID: <730@vsi.UUCP> Date: 24 Jun 88 19:04:28 GMT References: <522@sbsvax.UUCP> Organization: V-Systems, Inc. -- Santa Ana, CA Lines: 58 In article <522@sbsvax.UUCP>, greim@sbsvax.UUCP (Michael Greim) writes: > [question on "PD" curses by Pavel Curtis] > > My questions are > 1.) Has the status of this software changed since 1982, i.e. is > it still in the public domain? Please be very careful here folks. *************************************************************** ******** "Public domain" means "absense of copyright" ********* *************************************************************** Put another way, when you put your software in the public domain, you are giving away >all< of your rights. Once it is PD, you cannot put restrictions on it ("commercial use prohibited", "military use prohibited", "you gotta pay me", etc.). Public domain means you are really giving it away. If, on the other hand, you wish to retain your rights -- entirely reasonable -- it should be copyrighted. "Copyright 1988 by me, permission granted for noncommercial use". This is how the FSF handles GNU: read the GNU docs -- "GNU is not in the public domain". When we signed up for uunet, part of the netnews source distribution included an excellent article by Jordan Breslow. He is an attorney practicing copyright law and computer law, and he describes in pretty good detail all of the above plus more. I'll send a copy to anybody who asks; if there is enough interest I'll post it. It is very enlightening and entertaining reading. I wish the moderators of the various sources groups would examine the PD/copyright status of their submissions and insure that these terms are not used interchangeably. I cringe when I see (for example) the C Users Group have in their "Directory of PD C source code" say "CUG cannot (and will not) distribute software that is not in the public domain. ... When a disk is submitted with copyright notices, we try to identify them and include them on the outside of distribution disks." Maybe I'm just being picky, but it seems that it would behoove us to find out and be safe. Steve P.S.: I'm not a lawyer and I'm proud of it :-). -- Steve Friedl V-Systems, Inc. (714) 545-6442 3B2-kind-of-guy friedl@vsi.com {backbones}!vsi.com!friedl attmail!vsi!friedl Nancy Reagan on the Free Software Foundation : "Just say GNU"