From: mhall@occs.cs.oberlin.edu (Matthew Hall)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Shareware Legality - Summary
Date: 2 Sep 92 20:18:55 GMT
Article-I.D.: occs.MHALL.92Sep2151855
Distribution: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Organization: Oberlin College Computer Science
X-Posted-From: occs.cs.oberlin.edu
X-Posted-Through: sol.ctr.columbia.edu

Hello-
	Thank you all for your replies to my question - in brief I
released software to sumex-aim, asking to be contacted before it was
redistributed, and found out that NAUTILUS, against my wishes,
included it on their latest CD-ROM.  The answers I recieved were
widely varied ( only one of them told me that I was completely silly)
and there were at least 30 responses, on the net and by e-mail.  

As for what I should do now, the responses tended towards the line
that I had goofed.  A legal action was discouraged (I wasn't really
planning on a suit - that seemed a little much) as it would probably
cost more than I would gain.  I could ask them to remove my App from
their disk, but it is published now, and I doubt that they will recall
all the copies.  The damage is done, and the best course of action
seems to be a polite, firm letter telling them that they were at
fault. (Maybe the all of the other disenchanted folks that this
happened to and I can start a letter writing campaign.  Or heck - all
call to complain... collect. :-) )

To protect against these things, the first thing is to copyright your
program (I did). Put the copyright sign, date, and your name in your
programs About box, and in the documentation. This may give you all
the protection you need, but you should take the additional measures below.

Next, in the documentation, or README file, be very careful that you
use the correct wording if you don't want this to happen.  If you want
them to ask you beforehand, say something like "Any person or persons
wishing to redistribute this program for a profit MUST gain written
permission from me, the author, beforhand".  You can't be too explicit
here, and be very, very careful.  "Contact me" may be interpreted as
not needing permission, merely sending a letter to you.

(Other helpful lines - add one about "The author takes no liability
for damages..." so noone can take action against you if they think
your program fried their hard drive, and add one about "Redistributed
copies of this program must be distributed with all files, including
this one" so that if someone gets a copy second hand, they know
better)

Finally- Register your program with the library of congress.  The
person posting this suggestion, however, did not say explicitly how to
do this.  Perhaps someone could post instructions.

Oh yeah, MacTutor's latest version includes an article on software
authors rights.  Looks like I should get me a copy.

Thanks to everyone who responded.
-matt hall

P.S.  I guess it was somewhat flattering to have my meager app
published on CD-ROM (I can tell my friends that I got put on CD this
summer) however, I did feel like my rights were violated here, and I
now know that I will have to be very careful in the future -
especially with the commercial version which I am publishing myself
and selling through catalogs.  Anyone who has suggestions for that, I
welcome your replies, and again will summarize.

--


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Matt Hall.    mhall@occs.cs.edu  OR  SMH9666@OBERLIN.BITNET
              (216)-775-5805 (That's a Cleveland Area code. Lucky Me)

"If a man comes up to you and says:
	'A dog just carried away your ear.'
Do you run after the dog, or search first for your ear?" - Moon over Morocco
  
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