Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.oop.misc
Distribution: world
From: ksand@apple.com (Kent Sandvik)
Organization: Odyssey Ultraware, Inc
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 02:55:32 CDT
Subject: Re: Summary: I'm faint! I just saw the price for MPW!

In article <jsuker.725131248@orion.oac.uci.edu>, jsuker@orion.oac.uci.edu
(Johnathon Suker) wrote:
> >statement does not clearly state that the snippets also belong to this 
> >category, but this is the case as well. So I will talk with the people
> >downstairs making sure that this is also included to the license in 
> >future.
> 	I came onto this thread rather late, but I am writing a program
> that uses some code from one of the TechNotes (it is a generic socket
> listener) also from TechNote 18.  When done I wanted to release this 
> program as shareware/freeware (I havent decided yet).  Am I to assume
> I now cannot?  I am modifying the code for my purposes but you can only
> write an event loop so many ways and so I used the TechNote code.  Do
> I now have to re-write all of it or just give Apple credit (which I 
> was going to do anyway)?

The TN/sample code responsible person told me that snippets and source
code in samples are OK for reuse. Earlier I was worried myself because we
at
DTS have written and are writing more and more re-usable component level
samples, and the main idea with these are really copy-paste, and not worry
about legal issues. But we cleared up this situation months ago.

The core idea with sample/snippet copyright is that we control who updates
the sources, so if we need to revise them, it is our version that
is the official one. We don't want to see something similar happening as
in the case of NewsWatcher for a while, when there were N versions floating
around. Otherwise 're-cycling' of code is all right.

The problem I saw yesterday was that the license agreement didn't clearly
state this -- and I'm talking with the people to make sure that this will
happen.

So don't worry, publish your code, but from an ethical point of view it
makes sense to quote the sources to your snippets.

As for MacApp applications, I must once more state that if Adobe et
the the rest of the big guys dare to publish MacApp based applications,
then the rest of you should sleep during nights as well :-). 

And the last point, if re-use of DTS source code would be verboten, you
would see herds of Apple lawyers everywhere, starting up cases against poor
developers :-). The core thing is that we -- as well as most other
SW companies -- don't like the idea that someone just dumps the asm, tweaks
a couple of instructions, and then ships the binary as their own
copyrighted
version. This has happened. And it's called cheating on the expense of
others' sweat :-(.

I hope we have cleared up this infamous rumor once and for all. And if you
really have a borderline issue, contact Apple Legal, 
SW.LICENSE@Applelink.apple.com, they are a nice bunch of people, I've
talked
with them before, they don't bite, and they would give you the ultimate
Apple statement about anything related to legal issues.

Kent
-------------------
Kent Sandvik (UUCP: ....!apple!ksand; INTERNET: ksand@apple.com)
DISCLAIMER: Private activities on the Net.		
"Don't just do something!  Stand there!"  -- Mystery Science Theater 3000


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