To Everyone,
Nowhere in my message did I accuse Joker of pirating my code. No where in my message did I deny him the right to put my code on his page. No where in my message did I ask him to remove the code or to take down the page. In fact, my message to him gave him the permission he needed to include the code. My point of the message was that I should have been asked first if it was okay to republish the code I have on a copyrighted web page on another web page. That is the only issue, not whether or not Joker had the right to do the mod. All I asked was that, in the future, permission be obtained before the fact. Now I will try to address individual comments:
Joker,
I replied to the majorify of your reply in response to your email. I note with interest that there is much said here by you that was not in the email you sent me. The whole tone has changed based on those extras. However, I am not going to go into those extra parts. All I did was 1) give the permission to use the code and, 2) asked that you obtain permission first in the future. I meant no more or less than that.
I will reply to your reply to prior though:
Quote:
However if this is how it should be, then many people here are going to have to spend time to get permission grom the original programmer for every piece of code or routine pertaining to perl.
You were not using "pieces" of my code. You said you did not use the full code, but I couldn't find anything you left out except where changes were made to incorporate your changes and the other mod you were integrating. Other than that, all my code was there.
tassie,
By US law, all work is protected by copyright the minute it is published and, in fact, doesn't even need to be published to be copyrighted. Even notes someone makes in a personal diary are copyrighted. One does not have to register it officially first. It is best to register it for it to hold up in court, but it is not required. Courts could uphold it even if it were not registered officially.
I didn't kick anyone in the teeth for doing the mod. I just asked that permission be obtained before my code is republished someplace else.
I never said I don't want people using my mods. My objection was to the republishing of my code without the courtesy of asking first if it was okay. Joker's page contained parts of my code that were not necessary to his mod. In fact, nearly all of it was not necessary. Only the parts that needed changing were necessary to post, especially since the page included a link to my web page that contains the original mod.
t_dog,
Quote:
I'm sure Bobsie just forgot that he already gave you the go-ahead.
I didn't forget anything. I never gave permission to post my code as it was done. I only advised Joker to go ahead and attempt the mod and see what he comes up with and, if necessary, to ask for help if he runs into trouble. In his message, there is the implication that I refused to help which is not true. I only said I could not do it because I did not have the time to do it myself. He didn't need permission to modify my mod. No one does. That is not what my post at the top of this thread said or implied.
pugdog,
You are correct, I did not state what those rights are that I reserved. That is because copyright law itself states what the rights are. By publishing my mod on a web page, I gave implicit rights to anyone that wanted to use the mod to do so for their own personal use. All other rights were reserved by me. My mod is in the public domain but my code is not public domain. That is, anyone can use the mod, but no one owns the code but me. Since I gave no other permission concerning the code other than you can use it for your Links installation, no one had the right to republish it elsewhere without permission, which is all my message asked for in future cases.
Quote:
If you would like to reserve specific rights, you need to include a line or two on what rights you wish to reserve.
This is not required by Copyright law. What you are referring to is a software licensing agreement, not copyright. The term, "All Rights Reserved" is all the law requires if I wish to reserve all other rights under copyright. The page the code appears on is copyrighted. The code on the page is copyrighted. Republishing the page or the content (code) on the page is prohibited under copyright without permission. That is what the entire issue is about, not whether he can make a mod to my mod and publish his mod.
Under the "Fair Use" clause of copyright, he can use parts of my code without permission but he cannot use the whole thing which is what appears to me was done. All parts of the code not necessary to his mod were used verbatim without permission. My message at the top of the thread gave that permission (after the fact) and asked that, in the future, permission be obtained first. Nothing else was meant or intended by my message.
Instead, I am being turned into a bad guy when all I was doing was trying to protect my rights and trying to be nice by granting the permission that was missing.
I have seen people make mods that replace an entire script (i.e., nph-build.cgi or some other Links script) that people are told to download. That is a violation of copyright as well unless
Gossamer Threads has given permission for the mod author to do that. How many asked first? I would imagine very few if any at all. That is why my mods only include the code that needs to be changed, not an entire script. No one needs permission to do things like that.
[This message has been edited by Bobsie (edited July 16, 1999).]
