Silly Copyrights (was Re: Legal uses of lex & yacc)

[David Harrington]

In article <659 at mwtech.UUCP> martin at mwtech.UUCP (Martin Weitzel) writes:
>In article <34421 at ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> jwl at ernie.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (James Wilbur Lewis) writes:
>[nob relevant stuff deleted]
>>I just looked; none of these files contain copyright notices. 
>
>
>>
>>It'd be silly to copyright those files, because that would
>>render these tools useless for commercial software development!
>>You couldn't even distribute the binaries because they're derivative
>>works (right?)  
>
>Experience tells, that companies do in fact silly things with
>copyrighting:
>
>2) IMHO it's against the spirit of UNIX, to have 'limited user' licences,
>   because there is no "natural way" to enforce this. Practical
>   methods vary from vendor to vendor (what is a user? An entry in
>   /etc/passwd? A tty-line? How does UUCP count? What about multiple
>   sessions on Multi-Screens? Under X-Windows?)

It's easy to define and detect a user.  Each time a piece of software is
invoked, it is invoked by a user.  Bump the counter by 1.  Techniques can be a
license daemon, hard-wired code, or a file.

What does UUCP have to do with it?  or X?

>3) I quote from my license for my ISC 386/ix:
>	"... [you may] either (a) make one (1) copy of the Software
>	 solely for backup purposes or (b) transfer the Software to
>	 a single hard disk provided you keep the original solely
>	 for backup or archival copies"
>    (no kidding: It seems, that I am not allowed, to make regular
>    backup-copies of the hard disk to several tapes. This *is* silly.)

Hey, they're doing you a favor.  Why do you want to back up the OS regularly?
Are you making changes to the kernel, and if so, how?  Binary or hex?  Not
backing it up saves tape, and time.

[Small punctuation flame:  why do you put commas in random places in, your
sentences?  It really, makes reading your sentences, hard.]


-- 
David Harrington		                      internet: dgh at unify.UUCP
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