D. Starner wrote: > Okay, I have an Algol68 compiler written at Oklahoma State University > in 1971. (This is not a hypothetical - I have this code, and have > considered porting it to a more modern system, say Fortran 77 targetting > a VAX.) Is it clearly in the public domain?
No, the legal status of software was unclear in many countries. For example, in Germany, trivial software wasn't copyrightable back in the 80s. I don't know the situation in the US, but I wouldn't be surprised if the copyright issue depended on the particular piece of software you were dealing with.
