Author: Ed Schröder
Date: 00:52:16 01/25/99
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>>Just took a look at your sources I once have downloaded. I noticed >>there is no license agreement or copyright statement at all? >>How can people know about the legal status? >First, look at the top of main.c.. the copyright notice is right at the top, >and has been there since it was first released. Second, I'd think most people >could figure out that you can just 'lift' something written by someone else and >claim it as your own work. That's called plagerism. If you took any sort of >English/Writing/Grammer courses in college, you were taught that when you take >something 'verbatim' from another author you _must_ cite the source and original >author _every time_. _no_ exceptions... >I'd assume everyone has that basic training in writing? > >IE my son had this in 10th/11th/12th grade in high school. I am sure everybody knows. But your "copyright notice" is not so clear at all. I will add a few recommendations for you (see below). >* Crafty, copyrighted 1996 by Robert M. Hyatt, Ph.D., Associate Professor * >* of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Alabama at Birmingham. * >* * >* All rights reserved. No part of this program may be reproduced in any * >* form or by any means, for any commercial (for profit/sale) reasons. This * >* program may be freely distributed, used, and modified, so long as such use * >* does not in any way result in the sale of all or any part of the source, * >* the executables, or other distributed materials that are a part of this * >* package. any changes made to this program must also be made public in * >* the spirit that the original source is distributed. * >You should find that at the top of any version you have, hopefully... >but only in main.c... This is the first hint, put the copyright notice in all files. Next make it a separate file called "copyrigh.t" or "license.txt" or whatever name. Just make sure it can be missed. You definitely should rewrite the copyright notice. It's all not so clear what you really mean. It's maybe 100% clear to you but that doesn't necessarily mean it's clear for everybody. I am not an expert in making contracts although I have signed many in my life. The most important thing in a contract is a detailed description of the starting-point. It describes what both parties want and expect from each other. If an article in a contract is unclear or can be interpreted in 2 ways (this is often the main trouble with contracts) a judge looks at the description of the starting-point which describes the "original intention" of the parties involved in order to make up his mind. In your case describe what your intentions are distributing the source code freely. Add all situations you don't want to happen. It's now clear to me that: . Crafty sources aren't freeware. . You don't want to see Crafty clones entering tournaments (what a blessing) It is very unclear to me what is allowed: . May programmers add parts of Crafty in their own coding? . If so to what extend? A percentage or what? . If so are programmers obliged to mention that parts? . Is a programmer allowed to pick an "idea" from the sources and implement that in his own program using his "own" code? Note an idea is not code. If so is the programmer obliged to mention that? . What if programmers take the complete sources, snip out 50%, start to add their own ideas and after a couple of years the result is a new program with an own face what happens then? Note that in such a case the end-result may contain only 20-25% of the original code. I will be happy to offer you my services in case of debugging such a new copyright notice. Kind regards, Ed Schroder
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