Author: James B. Shearer
Date: 13:57:31 02/17/99
Go up one level in this thread
On February 17, 1999 at 14:50:13, Bruce Moreland wrote:
>Bob has the right to put whatever restrictions he wants on the resale or
>redistribution of Crafty. If he wants to tell people they can call it "Drafty"
>and resell it, that is his right. If he wants to tell people they can modify it
>and redistribute the binary while keeping the source secret from everyone
>including Bob, that's his right.
>
>This is all purely up to Bob, and everyone else has to respect this because in
>theory we live in a civilized world where you can't just club someone and take
>what you want from them regardless of their wishes.
>
>It does not seem that Bob has allowed people to do either of these things, and
>his legal rights should be respected by everyone.
This is not accurate. Bob has the rights granted every copyright holder
(including the right to prohibit sale of any work incorporating any substantial
part of Crafty). These rights are not unlimited. If I buy a book I may lend or
resell it regardless of the wishes of the copyright holder. Similarly the
courts are unlikely to enforce an attempt to limit distribution to "good
Christians" (for example). Further if Bob waives some of his rights it is up to
the courts (as opposed Bob) to decide what the waiver means. Nor will Bob be
allowed to retroactively modify the terms of a waiver.
>Assuming that people conform to the license that Bob has associated with Crafty,
>there are other problems. If someone gets Crafty, modifies it so that it is
>"better", and makes the source available, as required by the Crafty license, in
>such a way that satisfies Bob, I don't think that they have the *right* to enter
>a sanctioned tournament as sole author of the new creation. I think that Bob
>will always be a co-author, and he should have authority to say that yes, he'd
>like a specific entry to compete in a specific tournament, or no, he wouldn't.
>And since these tournaments have rules about individual authors entering more
>than once, he shouldn't be able to give approval to more than one of these
>Crafty-derived entries, including his own.
I think this is up to the organizers of a tournament. If you don't like
the rules you can decline to enter.
James B. Shearer
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