[fpc-devel] DOS GUI

[Hans-Peter Diettrich]

Mark Morgan Lloyd schrieb:
> Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote:
> 
>>> If the owner wants that not to happen,, choose any of these licenses 
>>> mentioned.
>>> This is really important. Without huge legal fees I can't get my 
>>> intellectual property  back....
>>
>> Sorry, that's nonsense. You still have all rights on your own 
>> software, no need to get anything "back". Even in outdated Copyright 
>> terms a "use as you like" should not mean "take ownership".
> 
> I don't think that's necessarily the case. If you don't make a clear 
> statement of ownership in every accessible file then it's difficult to 
> claim that it's not in the public domain (or "res nullius"),

In contrary, nobody can state then that it *is* in the public domain.

> that's why 
> classic IBM operating systems and HP calculator firmware are now being 
> distributed freely.

Not legally in the EU, at least not with consent of the rights holder.

Ownership expires after some time, perhaps the old Copyright protection 
has expired now? Otherwise ownership expires 70 years after the *death* 
of the author, what unlikely happened for software yet :-]

In current international law (Droit d'Auteur) *only* the author has 
rights on his work. Everbody else must be allowed by the author to use 
it. That's why a "author" note will allow to identify the person from 
which one can obtain the right to use it. When the author can not be 
identified, then the work is *not* in the public domain, nobody is 
allowed to use it.

DoDi