Path: csiph.com!aioe.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Rod Pemberton Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: Re: WF32, a Windows 32 bit Forth Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2017 22:45:54 -0400 Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server Lines: 39 Message-ID: <20170421224554.3164118b@_> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: ZTD62cW/Uw8bymX5ok+0NA.user.gioia.aioe.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@aioe.org X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.8.2 Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.forth:57766 On Fri, 21 Apr 2017 13:44:16 +1000 "HAA" wrote: > Alex wrote: > > Why change the licence from public domain to BSD? Partly because PD > > really doesn't have any legal standing in UK law; a new version of a > > public domain work will be copyright protected, even though the > > original work is not. > > That's the whole idea. You can rework a 'public domain' work then do > with it as you please including, as you did, place a copyright on > it. Placing a copyright on a public domain work is not legal in the U.S. as copyright law cannot be applied to a work once in the public domain. Placing another copyright on a copyrighted work for the modifications to that work is not legal in the U.S. either. The reason for both of these is because trivial changes to an existing work are NOT copyrightable under U.S. law, at all, e.g., patches, corrections, modifications, etc. Under U.S. law, trivial modifications to a work fall under the original copyright or lack thereof, i.e., public domain. This means that changes to GNU copyleft code fall under GNU copyleft, and changes to public domain works fall under the public domain. If he made substantial changes, then he can copyright those changes, if they've been extracted from the original public domain work. Also, the only time a copyright can be applied to a derivation of another copyrighted work is when there are substantial changes which are sufficient enough to qualify the derivation as a completely new work in the eyes of the law. If his modifications are less than the majority of the derivative work, then he can't copyright the resulting derivation. Rod Pemberton -- All it takes for humanity to conquer the world's toughest problems is to hope, to believe, to share, and to do, in cooperation.