> Use without author's permission is not legal, selling without author's > permission is not legal (unless your local law allows otherwise), and > making a profit of something gets you in court quite fast indeed. > > Bernd >
The GPL is an exception, it gives you permission to use the software it covers as long as you follow the terms without the author's permission. As far as profit, I have NEVER made a profit downloading commercial software I didn't purchase a copy of. Freedos could be proprietary. Actually, it never will be proprietary because the GPL doesn't allow that thank goodness. The software you can use with Freedos shrinks considerably if we start saying that abandonware cannot be used. Anything designed for dos these days is either abandoneware or GPL'ed as there are no commercial dos systems that are supported. If that isn't true, someone name a commercial dos program that is still sold and supported and the dos platform that it is supported on. Noone should have a right to profit from a program that is designed for a system that isn't supported anymore. The chances of making Microsoft support dos or even Windows 9x again are zero. Should the author of an Atari program who hasn't supported it since the Atari died out be allowed to demand observance of it as his/her intellectual property? How about color computer software? Should commercial software for the color computer even though it isn't produced anymore be recognized as such? Should I be allowed to sell commercial software for the original 8 bit Nintendo, assuming I could profitably do so? Is turbovision OSS software? Are all the development packages that should be used for Freedos 1.1 open source? There are practical problems with recognizing abandonware as being equal to commercial software such as Vista or Windows 7 for example. Should Novell prosecute someone if they hand their friend a copy of Netware 1 with the license code for free? How about Netware 2? Netware 3? Netware 4? There is a ton of commercial software that is either abandoned or superseded by newer releases. I own a copy of Warcraft II that I paid for and I downloaded a copy of Warcraft I from vetusware.com which I can't buy at my local store anymore. In fact, everything on Vetusware appears to be software that you can't buy from anyone, other than a pirate that is. Downloading commercial software that has been abandoned is not going to get you into trouble in court, especially if you have defective media for it sitting on the shelf. Ideally, owners of commercial software (the intellectual property) declare it to be public domain software even if they hold onto the source code when they abandon or stop supporting it. There should be laws that limit ownership when it comes to software because the current laws are creating software monopolies where Microsoft is one of the most well known. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Stay on top of everything new and different, both inside and around Java (TM) technology - register by April 22, and save $200 on the JavaOne (SM) conference, June 2-5, 2009, San Francisco. 300 plus technical and hands-on sessions. Register today. Use priority code J9JMT32. http://p.sf.net/sfu/p _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
