revOnline and Open Source

[Richmond]

On 08/01/2013 12:52 PM, Robert Mann wrote:
> So to sum it up :
>
> 1. Situation is a big mess :: all stacks published at revOnline are ab
> initio protected by copyright, which is in apparent conflict with the
> purpose of revOnline, which is to share code ideas and code.
> 2. Authors SHOULD specify the terms and license they agree upon
> 3. Clearly, taking a revOnline stack and distributing a commercial version
> without the original author consent would be illegal.
> 4. Open  Source Side effect : If authors do not do not care to specify an
> Open Source License, the stack cannot be simply modified and re-published
> with OS Livecode, as the second "user" will have no clean right to do so,
> except if he asks the original author for authorization or license to do so.
> That should be cleared a minimum at the revOnline publishing stage otherwise
> one could end up with a bunch of mixed spaghettis.
>
> 5. The protection of libraries remains to be clarified.
>
> -----------
> Question :: what if I open a revOline stack, find some handlers and
> mechanism I like to use elsewhere, just copy part of the script from the
> editor, modify a little to suit my precise needs and environment.
>
> Copyright applies to a complete work and does and should not protect
> "ideas". The purpose of revOnline is to promote the communication of "ideas"
> of implementations... so we are on a kind of frontier.
>
> So that practice of using revOnline as a source of inspiration should not
> break copyright rules???
>
>

What you are doing is showing how "dicky" the concept of copyright, 
unless directly stated, seems
to be . . .

. . . many years ago my father had the idea of making rubber overshoes 
for horses, and wrote
about that idea to a friend of his, who said that the idea sounded 
fairly daft . . .

. . . almost simultaneously, my father discovered that somebody had had 
the same idea, and later started marketing the things. There was 
absolutely no question that my Dad's friend had done anything sneaky with
my Dad's idea; he hadn't.

Now, I suppose my father could have wasted a lot of time, effort and 
money trying to make a case for his getting some of the profits from the 
sales of rubber overshoes for horses because he had had the idea, and 
written about it to a friend, about a year before the other chap started 
making them.

So: I really don't see how ideas can be copyrighted.

I have pupils of mine making calculator apps with Livecode as part of 
their progging classes with
me: I cannot see why (should one of those kids decide to market his/her 
app) anybody should
have to start paying royalties to the first person who developed a 
calculator app for a computer, or,
for that matter, the person who first marketed a handheld electronic 
calculator.

I show the kids I work with my (bust) Sinclair calculator [ 
http://www.vintage-technology.info/pages/calculators/s/sinccamuni.jpg ] 
(well it is good for a few laughs), explain its erstwhile functionality  
on the whiteboard,
and off they go with their progging. I am not sending five pound notes 
to Sir Clive Sinclair (even though I
admire tha man immensely).

--------------------------------------------

If copyright is not explicitly stated then, surely, the thing is up for 
grabs . . .

I own a copy of "The Microbiblion" (published 1640), and were I to 
believe that as it has no explicit copyright
statement it was somehow protected by some implicit law I would be 
flying in the face of the people who
published it, when there were no copyright laws, and even the concept of 
copyright did not exist.

Richmond.