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Re: Re: Are c code from www.ioccc.org free?



On 22 Nov 2002 at 10:59:19 US EST (GMT-0500) The Hon. Branden Robinson
<branden@debian.org> expounded as follows 

> On Fri, Nov 22, 2002 at 10:36:20AM +0100, Luca - De Whiskey's - De 
> Vitis wrote: 
>> Copyright (C) Landon Curt Noll, Simon Cooper, Peter Seebach 
>> and Leonid A. Broukhis, 2000. 
>> All Rights Reserved.  Permission for personal, educational or 
>> non-profit use is granted provided this copyright and notice are 
>> included in its entirety and remains unaltered.  All other uses must 
>> receive prior permission from the contest judges. 
>> --- cut --- 
>> 
>> I'm a bit confused by the possible interpretation of "All other uses 
>> must receive prior permission from the contest judges": this sentence
>> neither deny all other possible uses, nor it explicitly allows them. 
> 
> The default license policy for copyrighted works, at least in the 
> United States, is "All rights reserved."  Any permissions not granted 
> in the license are withheld.  There is an implicit use license which 
> automatically attaches to published works, but even this is under 
> assault in the U.S. with laws like the DMCA. 
> 
> The license is not DFSG-free.  Redistribution is not permitted (DFSG 
> 1), modification is not permitted (DSFG 3) and it does not grant 
> permission for use in non-personal, non-educational, and for-profit 
> activities (DFSG 6). 
> 
<.sig snipped> 

I agree with Branden.  I have mulled over the ioccc "license" for
several years and come to the conclusion that it was written in such a
way that A) casual downloaders could take the code and play with it, B)
college profs could take the code and use it to 1) demonstrate the power
of the C preprocessor and 2) show how NOT to code, and C) nobody else
could do a damn thing with it without express permission.  For a
"no-fee/no-(express)-royalty 'license'" this buzzard is about as
restrictive as it gets to be. 

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