Rugxulo wrote:
Does Brazil have the same laws?
Yes, essentially (i.e., Berne convention):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_international_copyright_agre...
Do they care as much about copyright as other countries? (Doubt it.) What about Japan? China? Or are we just assuming everyone follows the U.S.?
Rather Switzerland here -- the home of the Berne convention, the location of ETHZ, the nationality of Wirth ...
Maybe it's simpler for me to not care than you, I dunno. My life isn't so complex that I have to worry. I'm just saying, don't worry as much about the letter of the law as much as trying to do good work (which *should* be the spirit of all laws).
In your own fantasy country. In reality, many laws are not so -- especially patents quite explicitly prevent doing much good work, copyright to some extent.
They'd still find a way. Don't forget that GPLv3 is preferred since it closes up some of the holes left by GPLv2 (tivoization). Yet v2 is still heavily preferred (and not always with the "or later" clause).
Again, what does this have to do with this case??? If we got a license for P5, we'd have the compiler in source form, not in Tivoized form. Sorry, just citing random issues is not an argument, you have to show how they relate to the question at hand.
The point was you generalized on free software licenses as if they solved everything, and they don't.
No, I, didn't!!! I went through your concerns (old OS, old CPU, stopped selling, ...) point by point and showed you how they are addressed. That's the opposite of generalization.
GPLv3 (which GPC uses) explicitly covered some holes left by GPLv2.
Some specific holes like Tivoization which don't apply here.
So don't tell me "most free software protects you" when they don't.
So far the GPL has stood pretty well in court and in out of court settlements.
(Most people still use GPLv2, esp. Linux. Now I don't personally think it's that big a deal, but some people, sheesh ....) We can't even get FSF and Debian and OSI to agree on what constitutes "free" (see OpenWatcom's license debate)! *BSD surely hate GPLv3 (why?), so they won't help. So that's yet another minefield to traverse.
No, it's not. Any of those licenses or definitions would be sufficient here. Even a very simple all-premissive non-copyleft release or public domain would do.
Some licenses try to address more issues (e.g. GPL, to prevent non-free derived works, GPL 3 to prevent Tivoization, among other things), but they all share a common feature, which is that one can use the code and base (at least) further free projects on it with the assurance that the copyright holder cannot prevent it later. That's all that would be required here. We don't need P5 to prevent Tivoization -- we can do it with our own code; and even if we didn't, Tivoization will not bring the project down, it just allows some form of non-free spinoffs.
That (obviously) people are more important than legalities, laws, software, licenses, etc. They can annoy you more than any technical problem you encounter.
s/technical/legal/?
Have you ever been sued by a big company, demanding millions and threatening to destroy what you spent your last few years working on, in a court case that extends over many years? I haven't, but I imagine it's much worse than quarreling with your friends about some baseball cards which will be forgotten in a few weeks.
Anyways, Scott said Pemberton was well aware of his efforts but stopped responding to his emails.
What an argument. Since Scott now stopped responding to our emails, does this mean we can use his works (including IP Pascal) as if they were public domain? (Just kidding, of course.)
A copyright holder has no obligation to explain himself or argue with you. In fact, they don't have to do anything, not to register the works or even put an explicit copyright notice on it. As long as they don't explicitly release it, the copyright stands (until it expires in many decades).
I'm curious, even diligent at times, but even I can't pretend to follow dead cases about things that nobody cares about. We have to draw the line somewhere.
If we were going to use it, it wouldn't be a dead case (anymore).
The point is they really waited WAY too long to complain about P4 and these other things.
No, they didn't. Look up term limits in the relevant laws, not your personal opinion.
You don't think 40 years is long enough to figure out whether they want to appropriate P4 or not???
The law doesn't think so. Until copyright expires, the copyright holders can change their mind any day -- unless they've bound themselves not to do this (by releasing it as free software or into the public domain).
I agree. But you don't have to convince us, but the copyright holders -- whether ETHZ or individual authors. Explain your point to them and get a (legally valid, i.e. usually written) agreement from them.
I already said that would be wise. But if you can't get a response, what do you do?
You don't use it as a basis of your work.
: In true hacker fashion, Stallman began looking for existing : programs and tools that could be converted into GNU programs and : tools. One of the first was a compiler named VUCK, which converted : programs written in the popular C programming language into : machine-readable code. Translated from the Dutch, the program's : acronym stood for the Free University Compiler Kit. Optimistic, : Stallman asked the program's author if the program was free. When : the author informed him that the words "Free University" were a : reference to the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, Stallman was : chagrined. : : "He responded derisively, stating that the university was free but : the compiler was not," recalls Stallman. "I therefore decided that : my first program for the GNU Project would be a multi-language, : multi-platform compiler."
If you, or somebody else, chooses to take that risk, then by all means do so. Just do so with full understanding that you *are* infringing copyright, and even if the author is happy to turn a blind eye, the copyright holder might not be.
I have no intention of screwing over anybody. But we're talking about something very small and old. Doesn't mean legal wars haven't been waged on similarly old or small stuff, but still ... it doesn't seem like it's THAT big a deal!
P5 might not be a big deal (depending on your definition), but a (hypothetical) new GPC project would be. And this makes it a particularly bad deal to use P5 as a basis -- it doesn't help much (not a big deal, in your words), but it can hurt very much (since a legal threat would threaten the whole project). In fact, the opposite situation (using a large program of questionable copyright and doing some small modifications) is much less risky -- even if not legally sound, you don't stand to lose as much. So, unintentionally, you give a very good argument for my side. :-)
We're not designing our perfect copyright law, nor are we documenting all the crazy things people do. We're trying to help Frank decide what the future of gpc should be.
Clearly Scott (who is clearly intelligent) thinks P5 is worthwhile.
And yet he didn't base his own compiler (IP Pascal) on P5. "That should tell you something."
P5 is Scott's (heavy) modification. I don't know if it's enough to constitute a whole "new" work or just another derivative.
It's a derivative.
Isn't there some rule that if it changes enough to be unrecognizable that it's no longer a derivative but a new work?
Maybe if the changes are so extensive that no remnants of the original are recognizable (and even then I'm not sure, if the original was needed as an essential intermediate step), which is surely not the case with P5.
Right. But according to Pemberton's website:
http://homepages.cwi.nl/~steven/pascal/
"Included here is the Pascal source of a public-domain Pascal compiler and interpreter, the P4 compiler and interpreter."
Now we might be getting somewhere (after a lot of irrelevant discussion). However, this is a statement made by Steven Pemberton who didn't write the compiler (as you cited). The linked source code lists the authors, but contains no statement about (lack of) copyright.
At least one now has two avenues to pursue the matter when interested:
- Contact Steven Pemberton and ask him if he has a documented statment of its being PD, or if he used the term in an informal way, much as you do, meaning the copyright is currently not actively enforced; note that I'm not even sure if active releasing to PD is even possible under relevant laws -- it's not in many European countries -- though it could have been released under an "all-permissive" license, which effectively works quite similar to PD.
- Try to locate the named authors and ask them if they or the university own(ed) the copyright, then ask them or the university whether they have released it.
Frank