10 Aug
2004
10 Aug
'04
6:53 a.m.
Pat,
I understand all that but go back and read the original statement which
specificly said "public domain". It never said free. You and mouse have
taken this whole thing well away from the original discussion and intent.
Joe
At 01:27 PM 8/10/04 -0500, you wrote:
On Tuesday 10 August 2004 13:12, Joe R. wrote:
Again, "free" as applied to software a la "Free Software Foundation"
normally means "libre" not 0-cost. If you're equating "public
domain"
to "free," you haven't been paying attention to the movement started by
things like GNU, Linux, and *BSD.
Pat
--
Purdue University ITAP/RCS --- http://www.itap.purdue.edu/rcs/
The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org
At 12:00 PM 8/10/04 -0400, you wrote:
That's not my understanding. I've seen several pieces of software
where the author specificly stated the software was free but he also
stated that he had copyrighted it in order to keep people from making
modifications and then selling it as their own work. Wheather or not
it's copyrighted ultimatly has nothing to do with it's cost. It can
be "freeware", "shareware" or regular commercail software no matter
what the copyright status is.
That statement is called a "license grant". You seem to be ignoring the
meaning of "free" that der Mouse is referring to -- free as in freedom
("libre"), not free as in 0-cost. "Free software" is not freeware,
shareware, or proprietary ("commercial") software. Public domain is
essentially "free software," as you can do whatever you want with it.
>>
Name another computer with as many choices of OS and as many
>> versions, including third party and public domain OSs.
>
> Public domain? While admittedly I haven't specifically looked, I
> don't think I've ever seen a public domain OS for anything,
What about FreeDOS? Or they just call it that for kicks?
I imagine they call it that because it's free, for some value of
free. While I was unable to find an explicit license in a brief
poke around the freedos pages, I pulled over their boot floppy
image, and it's certainly got enough copyright notices embedded in
it. (This is rather disturbing, since if it's copyrighted but with
no license grant, it is probably illegal to do anything with it in
most jurisdictions.) Note that
"public domain" is a specific legal term with a specific
meaning, and does not equal "free" for any of the common meanings of
"free" as applied to software.
I don't agree with the last part of your statement. To most people
Public Domain equates to free. "Public domain" means the "public"
owns it legally but it's still free in that anyone can use it for
free.