Bah, silly reply sent only via private mail (Gmail's fault). I'm not egotistical to expect this post to be worth anything, but here ya go anyways ....

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Rugxulo rugxulo@gmail.com Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2010 23:55:07 -0500 Subject: Re: Quo vadis, GPC? To: Steven D'Aprano steve@pearwood.info

Hi,

On 8/12/10, Steven D'Aprano steve@pearwood.info wrote:

On Fri, 13 Aug 2010 02:26:41 am Rugxulo wrote:

...

It may be true that now all work is by default copyrighted. I'm not even sure you can PD software in some countries (ugh). But most important is the original author(s)' intent.

That is possibly the LEAST important factor. What the original author wants doesn't matter. What matters is what the current copyright holder thinks, and what the law says.

You're right, good point, BUT copyright was never meant to be extended indefinitely. And there are a lot of crazy laws. You can't please everybody, even if you try. It's a minefield. I'm not saying you shouldn't try, but pretending that a law (standard) matters over what most people think (Borland) is naive at best. Some people support the law just because it's the law. Others follow what's good and decent. (Yes, I have an unrelated grudge, heh, stupid law changed much to my disadvantage in an extremely arbitrary way.)

For example, I personally disagree that anybody but Terry Welch should've ever had the LZW patent, esp. since it was milked for twenty years AFTER he died!! Somebody please tell me how that's fair. (BTW, I hate software patents, just giving a lame example. If it doesn't help the guy who invented it, what good is it?)

...

If they don't care, nobody else will. It's not worth arguing over their "rights" when they don't care anymore (or never did).

That's simply not true. What happens when the author dies, and his heirs inherit ownership of the copyrighted work?

What happens when the compiler for the copyrighted work is no longer available? What happens when the OS it ran on is no longer available? What happens when it's no longer available for sale? What happens when the cpu it runs on is no longer mass produced? (See, I can worry too!) What happens if nobody remembers how to use it? What happens if everybody is too busy arguing legalities to appreciate the gift horse (and his mouth or whatever)?

What guarantee do you have that they will be as easy-going with regard to copyright as the original owner? Without a licence from the original author, this becomes a clear and obvious case of infringement.

I agree that a clear statement would be best. But if you can't get one, don't worry! No reason to assume the worst if you make a best effort to find out.

BTW, many people have rescinded licenses for various things without any good reason. And they scream and yell how they are allowed to push people around. It's disgusting. "Oops, sorry, end users, we don't care about you." Big surprise. It's not the first time nor the last.

What happens if the work was written under the auspices of a university, which in 1972 was quite happy to let the author publish without a copyright notice, but in 2010 discover that under the terms of their employment contract at the time, they actually own the copyright, not the author?

Gross incompetence at best, flagrant misuse of copyright at worst. Lucky for them it wasn't written in some extinct language! (How many existing, popular Pascal compilers can build P4 out-of-the-box? If it's only GPC, then I would find that highly ironic.)

Or what happens if responsibility for enforcing copyright is separate from the creative act? You can have a situation where the left hand is explicitly encouraging people to use copyrighted material, while the right hand is threatening those same people for infringement.

Probably a good reason that companies shouldn't get exclusive rights to all their workers' efforts. (How that's even legal is beyond me. What they do in their free time should never be owned by anyone else.)

A recent case, where the Discovery Channel's marketing department provided promotional material to a fan website, and the legal department then threatened them with a lawsuit and forced the owner to hand over ownership of the domain:

Trust me, I know of plenty of similarly crazy cases. I try not to infuriate myself with too much of that. People are crazy and will do crazy things whether it makes sense or not, legal or illegal, etc. The world is broken.

Don't imagine for one second that this is unique. I've even seen cases where the marketing department of a record label uploaded videos to YouTube, and the legal department then made DMCA claims and had their own videos removed. (I can't find the link right now, sorry.)

I've seen lots of crazy things too. Yes, big companies are crazy, and the crazy laws that cater to them are just as bad.

I note that you made a quip:

You know what they say about "assume".

and then immediately go on to advise us to assume that the absence of an explicit prohibition against copying a work is the same as permission to copy. That's terribly irresponsible. Under copyright law, it works the other way: in the absence of explicit permission, you are legally required to assume the prohibition stands.

Like I said, it's moot here since nobody here (except Scott) is using P4 or P5 for a compiler. BUT, if we were, I would definitely ask Steve P. (and whoever else) for some kind of reassurance. If that failed to get any response, I would not worry and proceed as normal.

It's kinda funny that this comes up today. I've had a certain book in my possession for months now because the person I returned it to (so they could return it to their mother, who loaned it to me) accidentally returned it back to me (!) and yet refused to retrieve it! Am I legally bound to return what I already returned, even at my own inconvenience? If so, how fast should I send it? I already told them twice about it, and they gave me the runaround. I finally just said, "Forget it, I'll mail it directly." Had to do it myself, they weren't responsible enough to do it! (Note that this book was only $15 new, which is very small claims at best. How much is a compiler [or more specifically, P4] worth to you??)

I also had some really old baseball cards I assumed for YEARS belonged to a distant family member, but that person never stayed in contact with me. (I am much younger.) I never could even confirm whose they were, much less what to do with them. I finally shipped them off to the "nearest" other relative I could find. Legally, I have no idea what I would be required to do, but I did my best to be fair (even if it took like twenty years, and note that I'm only 31, heh).

So yes, I do indeed care, but often times it's worrying over nothing. If nobody complains about something you ALREADY have in your possession, why would they complain once you do something with it? (Did Pemberton's publisher care to get the original authors' explicit permission? If they didn't care, why should we? For laughs???)