Richmond and copyright

[Mark Brownell]

On Monday, August 18, 2003, at 05:17  PM, Monte Goulding wrote:

> My guess (and this is something that we probably shouldn't guess 
> about) is
> that the copyright laws of the originating country apply to each 
> individual
> post. The copyright over the archive may be another matter as anyone 
> can
> archive the list. I can't see that any copyright can be held over a
> collection like that. Otherwise art galleries etc would be laughing.
>
> I think this is something that should be considered carefully. How 
> many of
> us have handlers that came from this list or Ken Ray's Tips in our 
> apps? I
> do. The last thing we need is SCO taking over one of our companies hey!
>
> Regards
>
> Monte

The SCO depute is over permission to disclose patented source code 
through a lawsuit over breach of contract. All this back and forth 
stuff is in regards to patents that have been awarded. They exist 
because of basic concepts for patents here in the USA. If the source 
code or even the idea that the source code attempts to conceive was 
published like on a list like this then the source code could not be 
patented. This is because of the Previous Art clause.

So stuff published on this list is already public domain. Now there is 
the issue of copyright. I believe that you can protect the copyright of 
an application that you create and defend that in a lawsuit. You could 
do that without regard for algorithms that were previously published 
and without fear of previous Art issues like in patents. The trick is 
to share only what you would not mind giving away.

Mark