[SC.LUG] More About Trebus

[Gareth Bowker]

On Tue, Dec 20, 2005 at 07:16:48PM -0000, Frank Mitchell wrote:

> Re-reading LGPL it looks as if I should have included libc in the Copyright
> Notice and offered to send you all the Trebus Object Files in case you're
> into modifying libc Source Code. Your right to Modify and Reverse Engineer
> Trebus is in fact guaranteed by European Law under similar circumstances to
> the LGPL scenario. That doesn't mean you're entitled to plagiarise it, and
> as long as I'm prepared to maintain it, I suspect everybody would prefer you
> to leave it alone.

Your copyright over the program legally stops anyone plagiarising it -
passing it off as being their creation.

I disagree on your point about "everybody preferring that it's left
alone" though. While it's great that you've written this software
and are providing it at no cost to people, as well as saying that you
want to maintain it, I'm wondering why you're not releasing it with
source, under a FSW licence? The reason that I ask is that being able to
have access to the source isn't just beneficial to people who want to
make modifications, but it also allows people who, for example, have
64-bit operating systems (e.g. AMD64) or use different architectures.
I have a version of Ubuntu GNU/Linux running on an Apple Mac. The
binaries you provided simply won't work on a Mac. Also, you mentioned
bugs in the software - if the software was under a licence like the
GPL, anyone could fix bugs and send you those fixes - the software
could develop at a much faster rate - and you'd continue to be the
maintainer of the software for as long as you wanted to be so.

That said, the copyright of the software is of course yours to do with
as you please!

> My understanding is that I can never get a Patent on Trebus, because it only
> involves standard IT Peripherals.

Patents which are purely software cannot be granted within the EU.

That said, it's not stopping the European Patent Office too much...

Cheers,

Gareth
-- 
Join the Fellowship and protect your freedom! (www.fsfe.org)
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