Re: Copyrights vs lefts

[samst@bdol10.indepth.com (Steve Sampson)]

This subject came up about a year ago (or was it less).  But at any rate
we were trying to determine who owned what, and who said how we could do
it.  This in sum was a crock.  Looking back we can see now what should
have been done.

The most important copyright is the original one.  The others are fought
as nuisance cases and traded for office supplies in big law firms.  One
case of toilet paper per claim.

People like to think they are important so they change a few lines of code
and resubmit with a larger copyright than the original author.  Or they
add their first name or cities letter to the file name.  The original
author is soon forgoten in all the hoopla.

Which brings me to my conclusion...

NOS should have one copyright.  All the paper-hangers should relinquish theirs
and replace it with a by-line:

Copyright (c) 1987 - 1995 P. Karn, KA9Q

Portions developed by:

---------------------	<- insert by-line here

I think this is much simpler, credits those who deserve it in an emotionally
satisfying way.  Go ahead, reach around and give yerself a pat :-)

A company comes to mind that spent all its money on lawyers.  How many of you
still use ARC to compress and archive your data?  Seems that they won the lawsuit
but lost the customers.  I think this is only fair.  Americans appreciate open
development, but firebomb the leaches...

If it's money you think you're going to lose, I would hazard a guess that the
total would be less needed to purchase a case of toilet paper...  Royalties
really suck in the software business.  Better you should write a magazine
article.  Now that's a car payment...
--
Happy 95, n5owk