On Thu, 24 Jan 2002, Jamie Hughes wrote:
> By having made the product downloadable you may use this version as you
> wish. I hope you find some good and interesting uses.
Uh...I'd be careful with phrases like this. This could easily be
interpreted as saying that you put the product in the public domain,
meaning I can decompile it, sell it to other people, use it to
compete directly with you, whatever I want. And once it's out like
that, there's no putting it back. You can add prohibitions on newer
versions, but not on this one.
Also, though under the Berne convention, you have copyright on your
work from the moment you create it, notices or not, not having
copyright notices can weaken your copyright claim, should there be
any sort of dispute over that at some point.
Not that I want to deter you from releasing free software, but
unless you're like me and put most of your free work into the public
domain, you should be fairly explicit from the start about what
you will and won't allow people to do with it.
cjs
--
Curt Sampson <cjs_at_cynic.net> +81 90 7737 2974 http://www.netbsd.org
Don't you know, in this new Dark Age, we're all light. --XTC
Received on Thu Jan 24 07:37:29 2002