HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: jfr@RedBrick.COM ()
Subject: Re: The best way to copyright?
Organization: Red Brick Systems, Los Gatos, CA
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 06:36:49 GMT

In article <1992Oct12.182241.11112@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> jgeniec@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Joseph A Geniec) writes:
>     I am a new shareware developer, and I intend to upload my
>software to BBS's. What is the best way I can go about
>copyrighting shareware?
>
>                                             J.G.

  Simple inclusion of a copyright notice:

        Copyright (c) MeMyself AndI, 1992
        All rights reserved

  is totally sufficient to secure copyright *protection*.  This notice
  should be included at the top of all source files and any other file
  or document that might be inspected independently.  It is NOT necessary
  to put the notice on every page or on every so many lines.  The assumption
  is that anyone inspecting the work will look at the front of it in order
  to determine its copyright status.  

  Securing copyright *protection* and actually being able to recover
  damages from violators are two different things.  If you have in fact
  copyrighted a work AND published it (the act of publication turns it
  into a copyrightable work) you are protected from the date of publication
  but you are not permitted to actually sue anyone for a violation UNTIL
  YOU REGISTER your copyright.  This is done by filing a form along with
  some amount of money (about $50 or so, although it may have gone up 
  given the $4 trillion dollar deficit :-) and a required copy of your
  work with the Copyright Office in Washington D.C. (or one of its
  regional offices).  Once the form is filed, you have a statutory
  copyright which gives you grounds to sue for damages against anyone
  violating your copyright.  While you can only get statutory damages from
  date of registration, the fact that you had NOT registered does not
  preclude you from establishing actual loss of revenues or profits.
  These may be recovered AFTER registration for losses incurred prior
  to registration.  In all cases, you must have provided the proper
  notices on all published works in order to be protected at all.

  Good luck,

  Jon Rosen
From: kg@elan.Elan.COM (Ken Greer)
Newsgroups: comp.software.licensing
Subject: Re: Small Developer, Public Domain LM
Date: 9 Oct 92 21:43:11 GMT
Organization: Elan Computer Group, Inc., Mountain View, CA

> In article <BvtH51.CH2@apollo.hp.com> mob@apollo.HP.COM (Mary Bennett) writes:
>>Well, if you believe that OSF is a standards company, ...

Standards organizations don't sell software.

Ken Greer  
Elan Computer Group, Inc. 888 Villa St. 3rd Floor Mt View CA 94041
Phone: 415-964-2200
Email: kg@elan.com or uunet!elan!kg
Newsgroups: comp.software.licensing
From: mob@apollo.HP.COM (Mary Bennett)
Subject: Re: Small Developer, Public Domain LM
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 00:12:18 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Company, Chelmsford, MA

In article <1b25o9INNam4@darkstar.UCSC.EDU>, haynes@cats.ucsc.edu (Jim Haynes) writes:
|> 
|> In article <BvtH51.CH2@apollo.hp.com> mob@apollo.HP.COM (Mary Bennett) writes:
|> >Well, if you believe that OSF is a standards company, then through the
|> >Distributed Management Environment (DME), a standard license management
|> >system will soon be available.  This is the same license management
|> >system that has been selected by Unix International (UI) and an ever
|> >growing number of large OEM's like: IBM, Silicon Graphics, Intergraph, 
|> >and Hewlett-Packard.  Other large companies will soon be announcing plans 
|> >to use this same license management system.  This technology is available
|> >now.
|> 
|> This is swell; but the PC and Mac business is a whole different jungle
|> of vendors selling fiercely proprietary shrink-wrapped $39.95 a copy
|> software packages with funny names.  Have any of them adopted this technology?

	The unnamed companies do indeed address the PC space.  As soon as this 
	becomes public information, I'll post it.

	Also, the technology that is provided by OSF does include a PC solution.
	This solution was developed by Gradient Technologies in Hudson, Mass. 

|> 
|> Even in the Unix world, does the OSF product address the original
|> question, which was a small developer who can't afford to pay big bucks
|> up front for code and a license to use it and distribute products using
|> it?

	A phone call to the OSF should tell you whether or not they have set 
	pricing for DME technology yet.	 I believe that OSF pricing is meant
	to be reasonable so that everyone can use it. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Mary Bennett                                250 Apollo Drive
    OSSD/Distributed Object Computing Program   Chelmsford, MA  01824
    Mail Stop chd-02-co                         Telnet: 436-4266
    mob@apollo.hp.com                           mary_bennett@hpj600.hp.com
    (508) 436-4266                              FAX: (508) 256-3941
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From: gibian@talent.ljo.dec.com (Marc S. Gibian)
Newsgroups: comp.software.licensing
Subject: Re: Moving back the system clock
Date: 9 Oct 92 21:57:57 GMT
Reply-To: gibian@ljohub.enet.dec.com
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation


I do not agree this would insure the best software licensing
system.  I DO agree this would make life for those building
software licensing systems, and those who rely on them, much
more relaxed.
--
Marc S. Gibian			email: gibian@talent.ljo.dec.com
Principal Software Engineer	phone: (508) 486-6598
Digital Equipment Corporation	fax:   (508) 486-6648  or (508) 486-6100
From: ram@eiffel.com (Raphael Manfredi)
Newsgroups: comp.software.licensing
Subject: Re: Small Developer, Public Domain LM
Date: 8 Oct 92 16:45:15 GMT
Organization: Interactive Software Engineering, Santa Barbara CA

Quoting royalty@bcstec.ca.boeing.com (Chuck Royalty) from comp.software.licensing:
|I am a big proponent of license management mechanisms which allow for tailoring
|of policies.  I don't know of any public domain license managers.  But as a
|user of some products which incorporate such managers in a large scale
|environment, I would like to say that the proliferation of different types of
|license managers (different interfaces, don't work together, don't log data
|consistently, don't support similar policies the same way, etc.) is making life
|quite difficult for me.  Whenever I get the opportunity I push, not only for
|reasonable, flexible policies, but for consistency across the implementations.

Is there a "standard" for licence managers, something describing a formal
specification of the protocol, the way keys are represented, how the client
communicates with the licence manager daemon, etc...? I don't think there is,
given the variety of licence managers offered by companies.

I've heard the MIT is working on a licence manager, which I hope will be made
publicly available and become a 'de facto' standard. If every company which is
in need for a licence manager but cannot afford the ones provided by dedicated
companies start developing their own, soon there will be lots of "licence
manager daemons" running on a single network node, all with different
configuration schemes, with different logging convention, as Chuck Royalty
pointed out.

What we need is a good GNU or PD licence manager implementation. If it is to
be used by many software, great care must be taken to ensure that the
authentication protocol between a given application and the shared licence
manager is safe and that nobody can issue keys for another application,
even by running a "fake" licence manager with some hooks to dump the traffic
with a particular client.

I don't know if that is possible, given the fact that most companies which
sell licence managers recommend you to keep the source they provide well
protected and away from the man in the street (for security reasons, of course).
-- 
Raphael Manfredi <ram@eiffel.com>
Interactive Software Engineering Inc.
270 Storke Road, Suite #7                      / Tel +1 (805) 685-1006 \
Goleta, California 93117, USA                  \ Fax +1 (805) 685-6869 /
Newsgroups: comp.software.licensing
From: d88-jwa@byse.nada.kth.se (Jon Wtte)
Subject: Re: Small Developer, Public Domain LM
Originator: d88-jwa@byse.nada.kth.se
Organization: Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
	<3802@bcstec.ca.boeing.com> <138@eiffel.eiffel.com>
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 19:27:25 GMT

> ram@eiffel.com (Raphael Manfredi) writes:

   What we need is a good GNU [...] licence manager implementation.

May I nominate this as the Oxymoron of the Year? :-)
May I quote you in my .signature?
-- 
Jon W{tte, h+@nada.kth.se, Sweden, Phone +46-8-107069

"From now on, I think I'll re-label the EQ on the
 desk as Fizz and Wobble, rather than HF and LF."
From: haynes@cats.ucsc.edu (Jim Haynes)
Newsgroups: comp.software.licensing
Subject: Re: Small Developer, Public Domain LM
Date: 8 Oct 1992 18:13:21 GMT
Organization: University of California; Santa Cruz
NNTP-Posting-Host: hobbes.ucsc.edu


In article <138@eiffel.eiffel.com> ram@eiffel.com (Raphael Manfredi) writes:
>Is there a "standard" for licence managers, something describing a formal
>specification of the protocol, the way keys are represented, how the client
>communicates with the licence manager daemon, etc...? I don't think there is,
>given the variety of licence managers offered by companies.

And I'm cynical enough to believe there isn't likely to be any standard, at
least for a while.  The market at present seems to consist of a several
license manager developers, each pushing his own proprietary product;
they don't want standards because their only competitive advantage is
in being different from all the rest.  Seems to me this isn't likely to
change unless some Really Big Player (e.g. Microsoft or IBM) adopts
a license manager protocol and makes it more affordable for software
developers (and end users) than any of the competing alternatives.
>
>I've heard the MIT is working on a licence manager, which I hope will be made
>publicly available and become a 'de facto' standard. If every company which is
>in need for a licence manager but cannot afford the ones provided by dedicated
>companies start developing their own, soon there will be lots of "licence
>manager daemons" running on a single network node, all with different
>configuration schemes, with different logging convention, as Chuck Royalty
>pointed out.
>
Yeah, but I wonder if the market has run so far ahead of MIT/gnu/etc.
that there won't be any momentum to whatever they do come up with.
-- 
haynes@cats.ucsc.edu
haynes@cats.bitnet

"Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an Art."
        Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle
From: bhayden@teal.csn.org (Bruce Hayden)
Newsgroups: comp.software.licensing
Subject: Re: The best way to copyright?
Date: 15 Oct 92 00:53:05 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Colorado SuperNet, Inc.

jrbd@craycos.com (James Davies) writes:

>In article <1992Oct13.063649.2027@RedBrick.COM> jfr@RedBrick.COM writes:
>>In article <1992Oct12.182241.11112@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> jgeniec@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Joseph A Geniec) writes:
>>>     I am a new shareware developer, and I intend to upload my
>>>software to BBS's. What is the best way I can go about
>>>copyrighting shareware?
>>>
>>>                                             J.G.
>>
>>  Simple inclusion of a copyright notice:
>>
>>        Copyright (c) MeMyself AndI, 1992
>>        All rights reserved
>>
>>  is totally sufficient to secure copyright *protection*.

>I have a tangential question here;  what is the current status of
>c-in-parentheses as a substitute for c-in-a-circle as a copyright symbol?
>It's widely used, but does it have any effect on the validity of the
>copyright notice (for good or bad)?

Will not address use of (c) directly except to say it is not accepted
yet by C/R office.

However, since we (the U.S.) joined the Berne convention (March 1, 1989),
From: charlesr@wspcrd.PeachtreeCityGA.ncr.com (Charles Rutledge)
Newsgroups: comp.software.licensing
Subject: Re: The best way to copyright?
Date: 15 Oct 92 15:00:56 GMT
Reply-To: charlesr@wspcrd.PeachtreeCityGA.ncr.com (Charles Rutledge)
Distribution: usa
Organization: NCR WSPC Peachtree City, Georgia

In article <1992Oct13.063649.2027@RedBrick.COM> jfr@RedBrick.COM writes:

>  If you have in fact copyrighted a work AND published it (the act of
>  publication turns it into a copyrightable work) you are protected from
>  the data of publication...

Actually, under US copyright law, a work is considered copyrighted when it
is created.  All works are protected for the life of the author plus 50
years (if the copyright is held by an individual) or 75 years (if held by
a corporation).

>  into a copyrightable work) you are protected from the date of publication
>  but you are not permitted to actually sue anyone for a violation UNTIL
>  YOU REGISTER your copyright.  This is done by filing a form along with
>  some amount of money (about $50 or so, although it may have gone up 
>  given the $4 trillion dollar deficit :-)

True, although I thought the fee was more on the order of $10, but it's
been a while since I've checked on this.

>  In all cases, you must have provided the proper notices on all published
>  works in order to be protected at all.

This is not actually true.  US copyrights are permissive, i.e. a work is
assumed to be copyrighted unless explicitly placed in the public domain or
the existing copyright has expired.  However, it is much harder to prove
copyright infringement without the notice, so it is always a good idea to
include it.  And a notice line of "(c) 1992 YourName" is not considered a
legal copyright notice.  The c has to be in a _unbroken_ circle, so when
typing your notice in the source code, always use "Copyright 1992 YourName"
(the "(c)" is often included after "Copyright", but has no legal status).

-- 
Charles Rutledge  /  NCR Test Program Development   |      NCR Corporation 
Internet: Charles.Rutledge@PeachtreeCityGA.NCR.COM  |  The Networked Computing
ATT: (404) 487-7000 Ext 7523 / Fax: (404) 487-7089  |     Resource Of AT&T
From: haynes@cats.ucsc.edu (Jim Haynes)
Newsgroups: comp.software.licensing
Subject: Re: Small Developer, Public Domain LM
Date: 8 Oct 1992 20:30:01 GMT
Organization: University of California; Santa Cruz
NNTP-Posting-Host: hobbes.ucsc.edu


In article <BvtH51.CH2@apollo.hp.com> mob@apollo.HP.COM (Mary Bennett) writes:
>Well, if you believe that OSF is a standards company, then through the
>Distributed Management Environment (DME), a standard license management
>system will soon be available.  This is the same license management
>system that has been selected by Unix International (UI) and an ever
>growing number of large OEM's like: IBM, Silicon Graphics, Intergraph, 
>and Hewlett-Packard.  Other large companies will soon be announcing plans 
>to use this same license management system.  This technology is available
>now.

This is swell; but the PC and Mac business is a whole different jungle
of vendors selling fiercely proprietary shrink-wrapped $39.95 a copy
software packages with funny names.  Have any of them adopted this technology?

Even in the Unix world, does the OSF product address the original
question, which was a small developer who can't afford to pay big bucks
up front for code and a license to use it and distribute products using
it?

I'm not sure whether OSF is a standards company - I don't think I
know what "a standards company" means.  Standards get used in the
field because of force of law, or force of market, or because they
save designers having to invent their own.  Standards often get ignored
because it is discouragingly hard for designers to get their hands
on copies of the standard.
-- 
haynes@cats.ucsc.edu
haynes@cats.bitnet

"Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an Art."
        Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle

Newsgroups: comp.software.licensing
From: rdg@world.std.com (R. Goldstein)
Subject: Re: The best way to copyright?
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 20:00:09 GMT

jrbd@craycos.com (James Davies) writes:

>In article <1992Oct13.063649.2027@RedBrick.COM> jfr@RedBrick.COM writes:
>>In article <1992Oct12.182241.11112@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> jgeniec@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Joseph A Geniec) writes:
>>>     I am a new shareware developer, and I intend to upload my
>>>software to BBS's. What is the best way I can go about
>>>copyrighting shareware?
>>>
>>>                                             J.G.
>>
>>  Simple inclusion of a copyright notice:
>>
>>        Copyright (c) MeMyself AndI, 1992
>>        All rights reserved
>>
>>  is totally sufficient to secure copyright *protection*.

>I have a tangential question here;  what is the current status of
>c-in-parentheses as a substitute for c-in-a-circle as a copyright symbol?
>It's widely used, but does it have any effect on the validity of the
>copyright notice (for good or bad)?

The copyright office has not yet changed their regulations regarding 
c-in-a-circle and has not said that c-in-paren. is an acceptable 
substitute.  Section 401 still says the letter c-in-a-circle or the
word Copyright or the abbreviation Copr.

Therefore, why try to make new law? ?;-)  At least one court has said
that the parenthesis is no good.  Do you really want to spend your time
trying to convince a judge that it is the same?  And as pointed out
above, lack of notice is no longer fatal under Berne (although if one
of my clients leaves it out my bills double for the next month).  There is
a real value to doing it "right", and actually using a proper notice.  It
takes away any defense from a potential infringer, and isn't that the
point of copyright protection in the first place?

Good luck!   Rich G.
-- 
Richard D. Goldstein
Schiller & Kusmer
Patent Attorneys At Law
(617) 227-5454 Telephone
From: ram@eiffel.com (Raphael Manfredi)
Newsgroups: comp.software.licensing
Subject: Re: Small Developer, Public Domain LM
Date: 9 Oct 92 00:35:56 GMT
Organization: Interactive Software Engineering, Santa Barbara CA

Quoting d88-jwa@byse.nada.kth.se (Jon Wtte) from comp.software.licensing:
>> ram@eiffel.com (Raphael Manfredi) writes:
>
>   What we need is a good GNU [...] licence manager implementation.
>
>May I nominate this as the Oxymoron of the Year? :-)

Thanks. I feel honored :-)

>May I quote you in my .signature?

Sure, you may.  Anything sent to Usenet may be freely re-used, by definition
(or shall I say, by purpose?).
-- 
Raphael Manfredi <ram@eiffel.com>
Interactive Software Engineering Inc.
270 Storke Road, Suite #7                      / Tel +1 (805) 685-1006 \
Goleta, California 93117, USA                  \ Fax +1 (805) 685-6869 /
Newsgroups: comp.software.licensing
From: hubbarde@infonode.ingr.com (Elaine Hubbard)
Subject: Re: The best way to copyright?
Organization: Intergraph Corporation, Huntsville, AL.
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 14:20:50 GMT

In article <1992Oct13.063649.2027@RedBrick.COM> jfr@RedBrick.COM () writes:
>In article <1992Oct12.182241.11112@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> jgeniec@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Joseph A Geniec) writes:
>>     I am a new shareware developer, and I intend to upload my
>>software to BBS's. What is the best way I can go about
>>copyrighting shareware?
>>
>>                                             J.G.
>
>  Simple inclusion of a copyright notice:
>
>        Copyright (c) MeMyself AndI, 1992
>        All rights reserved
>
>  is totally sufficient to secure copyright *protection*.  This notice
      Use of a notice on works published on or after March 1, 1989
      is voluntary, not required for copyright protection .

>  should be included at the top of all source files and any other file
>  or document that might be inspected independently.  It is NOT necessary
>  to put the notice on every page or on every so many lines.  The assumption
>  is that anyone inspecting the work will look at the front of it in order
>  to determine its copyright status.  
>
>  Securing copyright *protection* and actually being able to recover
>  damages from violators are two different things.  If you have in fact
>  copyrighted a work AND published it (the act of publication turns it
>  into a copyrightable work) you are protected from the date of publication
         Not since U.S. joined Berne Convention.  See below

>  but you are not permitted to actually sue anyone for a violation UNTIL
>  YOU REGISTER your copyright.  This is done by filing a form along with
>  some amount of money (about $50 or so, although it may have gone up 
>         The fee is $20 and the form is Form TX for literary works,
          which is how a computer program is processed.  Processing
          time is about 12 weeks.  

>  given the $4 trillion dollar deficit :-) and a required copy of your
>  work with the Copyright Office in Washington D.C. (or one of its
>  regional offices).  Once the form is filed, you have a statutory
                     Once registration issues, 

>  copyright which gives you grounds to sue for damages against anyone
>  violating your copyright.  While you can only get statutory damages from
>  date of registration, the fact that you had NOT registered does not
>  preclude you from establishing actual loss of revenues or profits.
>  These may be recovered AFTER registration for losses incurred prior
>  to registration.  In all cases, you must have provided the proper
>  notices on all published works in order to be protected at all.
         See above.  Notice on published works since March 1, 1989
         is voluntary, not required for copyright protection.
         Copyright protection begins when a work is fixed in
         tangible medium (ie, on paper, film, disk, tape, etc.)


>
>  Good luck,
>
>  Jon Rosen


-- 
Elaine L. Hubbard
hubbarde@cis15.b3.ingr.com

"Life is a play with a badly written third act"
From: royalty@bcstec.ca.boeing.com (Chuck Royalty)
Newsgroups: comp.software.licensing
Subject: Re: Small Developer, Public Domain LM
Summary: Diversity of license management utilities is a problem
Date: 7 Oct 92 19:33:32 GMT
Organization: Boeing Computer Services, Seattle


I am a big proponent of license management mechanisms which allow for tailoring
of policies.  I don't know of any public domain license managers.  But as a
user of some products which incorporate such managers in a large scale
environment, I would like to say that the proliferation of different types of
license managers (different interfaces, don't work together, don't log data
consistently, don't support similar policies the same way, etc.) is making life
quite difficult for me.  Whenever I get the opportunity I push, not only for
reasonable, flexible policies, but for consistency across the implementations.

Please at least keep it in the back of your mind when implementing such things
in your applications.  Some of us care almost as much about how it's done as
about the fact that it's done at all.
Newsgroups: comp.software.licensing
From: elling@eng.auburn.edu (Richard Elling)
Subject: Re: Moving back the system clock
Reply-To: elling@eng.auburn.edu
Organization: Auburn University Engineering
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 00:14:55 GMT

In article 4Ex@visix.com, ken@visix.com (Ken Mayer) writes:
>Changing the system clock on networked systems is getting harder and
>hadrder to do without seriously impacting users. (I suppose if NTP or
>some other protocol and internetwork connectivity kepp going, you
>system could just check (trusted) NTP time servers for the real time.)
>E-mail gets confused, developement operations with make and rcs are
>similarly obfuscated.

Yes, but one could change the time for a process and all of it's 
children.  Conceivably, nearly every process could have its own concept
of time.  So one could change the time for the app, but not affect
other system operations.

Once again, we're back to trusting customers.

---
 Richard Elling                          Manager of Network Support
 Auburn University                       Engineering Administration
 richard.elling@eng.auburn.edu   KB4HB [44.100.0.72]  (205)844-2280

Newsgroups: comp.software.licensing