At 10:38 +0100 98/07/21, Simon L Peyton Jones wrote:
>> Do you mean "public domain" literally, i.e. are you renouncing all
>> copyright? (The source code contains copyright notices, but no
>> licence, as far as I can see.)
>
>No I am not renouncing all copyright. By "public domain" I mean freely
>available for anyone to use for any purpose other than making money
>by selling the compiler itself. That isn't a formal definition,
>but I'm sure you see the intent.
The wording "public domain" is not a legal or otherwise well-defined
concept, so the advice to anybody writing publicly distributed software is
claim the copyright, and then specify what rules there should be for its
use. This way one can prevent abuse. One form of abuse (if not copyrighted)
could be that a company takes over the product for commercial purposes,
perhaps even copyrighting it itself.
A prudent "public domain" definition could be that the product can be
used commercially without a charge, but needs the written consent of the
copyrighter. Another criteria could be that a commercial versions of the
product can be allowed to make money on the commercially added features, or
costs for commercial distribution, but not on the product itself. So if a
commercial company adds say GUI, then they can charge what is reasonable
for that job, but they cannot charge for making use of the source codes.
(Just in order to avoid apparent cases of over-charging of the product.)
But the conditions should be spelled out in the copyright notice, I think.
I am not an expert on legal wrangling, but if the perceived independence
is at stake, one way could be to create a consortium and transfer the
copyright to that while retaining the right to develop the product.
Hans Aberg
* Email: Hans Aberg <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
* Home Page: <http://www.matematik.su.se/~haberg/>
* AMS member listing: <http://www.ams.org/cml/>
