Any updates on the license problem?

[BigEd]

I think that was true at one time but think it isn't any more.

I confess, I think I know a lot in this area, but I could well be out of date or mistaken. I'm sure everyone else also thinks they are right!

[BillO]

BigEd wrote:

He has claims on his contributions. In most cases, you can't create a copyrightable thing without at the same time getting the copyright on it.

Exactly, according to the law I shared with you, what he created (EhBASIC) is not copyrightable because he did not acquire permission from the original copyright holder (MS) to create the derived work (EhBASIC). Hence, he could not claim copyright on it.

I'm not sure why this is not clear, unless the information provided has not been read, so at this point I give up.

[BigDumbDinosaur]

BillO wrote:

...Alterations made illegally to a copyrighted work cannot be copyrighted because only the original copyright owner (MS in this case) can authorize the creation of derivative works, such as altered versions of their original work. Unauthorized alterations constitute copyright infringement...https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html...

Yep!  The “fair use” FAQ is unambiguous.

Lee had no right to claim a copyright for EhBASIC unless someone at Microsoft with the authority to do so had given him permission to create a derivative work—EhBASIC is an infringement.  As Lee’s derivation was made prior to Microsoft having released the source code under the MIT License, it remains an infringement despite the licensing change, and his claim of copyright remains null and void.

BigEd wrote:

Hmm, I would certainly say that if Lee created, say, a faster multiplication routine, that creation would have his copyright. Whether or not he embedded it in something else and whether or not he distributed the combined work.

As Bill indicates, that would be true if the multiplication routine is a stand-alone work, or a component of a larger work of which Lee is the sole author.  Claiming copyright on the routine would be a little shaky if Lee was one of several authors of the work—the other authors could also claim ownership of the routine.

On the other hand, if he concocted his multiplication routine as part of creating EhBASIC, he could not claim copyright.  His work would have been part of an unauthorized derivation, making it an infringement under the terms of U.S. copyright law (which is controlling in this case).

Quote:

If someone else then wanted to stitch Lee's work into another work, such as the freshly relicensed MS Basic, and distribute the combination, they would need to bear in mind his copyright. Similarly if they wanted to redistribute Lee's work on its own as a patch - it's not theirs to do that with. It have whatever license Lee put on his work.

My take on the “fair use” concept is that what you say would be true if the improved multiplication routine was not developed as part of an unauthorized derivation.  However, not all stand-alone works are copyrightable—the way the (U.S.) law reads might exclude some things that are based on obvious concepts or on prior art that is not in the public domain.

barnacle wrote:

In the UK, copyright is automatic, but I have an idea you have to register it in the States.

That used to be the case in the USA, but copyright law now extends an automatic copyright.  Placing a copyright notice in the work is optional, but highly recommended.  The author/creator doesn’t have to apply to the Copyright Office for formal registration, although not doing so may make it difficult to prosecute an infringement case—there would be no unimpeachable proof of when the claimed copyright came into being.

In reality, the value of copyright is dependent on the willingness of the author/creator to enforce a legitimate claim of infringement, a potentially expensive undertaking.  Also, should he/she do nothing and numerous others duplicate and/or distribute the work, a subsequent copyright claim might fall on deaf ears in a court case.

[BigEd]

Ah, that's where we differ, then. For me, in a joint work - even an inadvertent or unauthorised work - each contributor holds the copyright to their contributions. Unless, of course, there's some agreement about assigning copyright, which there normally is. (Ubuntu, I think, has a contributor's agreement, making the joint work's copyright solely Canonical's. Whereas Linux, I think, is the joint work of very very many people and the copyright is distributed accordingly.)

I'm not a lawyer, of course, and as far as I know, neither is anyone else here.

[BigDumbDinosaur]

BigEd wrote:

I'm not a lawyer, of course, and as far as I know, neither is anyone else here.

Closest I’ve gotten to being a lawyer was taking some classes on patent law in the early 1970s.  What I know about copyright, patent and trademark law is mostly the result of incidental reading while researching other things.

Anyhow, now that Microsoft has released the BASIC 2.0 source code under a “friendly” license, someone can put together a package that takes advantage of the 65C02, or even better, the 65C816 running in native mode.  Of course, it will still be 1970s technology code, but one could build from there.  If I were going to undertake such an effort, I’d make two fundamental changes: longer variable names, and floats with more bits.

[drogon]

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

Anyhow, now that Microsoft has released the BASIC 2.0 source code under a “friendly” license, someone can put together a package that takes advantage of the 65C02, or even better, the 65C816 running in native mode.  Of course, it will still be 1970s technology code, but one could build from there.  If I were going to undertake such an effort, I’d make two fundamental changes: longer variable names, and floats with more bits.

A 65C02 version of EhBasic has already happened - some time back too. I ran it for a while on my systems more as a curiosity than anything else as I'd already moved to the much more modern, better, faster BBC Basic (again)

This MS Basic/EhBasic/Whatever is good for historical use, but really - there are slightly more modern alternatives e.g. - look at the Foenix project for example for an 816 Basic.

I have looked long and hard at writing my own Basic for the 65C02 and made a start, but in reality I doubt I could better BBC Basic and I looked at stealing e.g. the FP code from it (very fast 5 byte floats and 4-byte integers) so sticking to BBC Basic for the time being.

And there are '816 versions of BBC Basic, but one appears to be "lost" and I don't think anyone has the enthusiasm to port the other (Acorn Communicator Basic).

I did start to port/re-write my own "big" Basic for my '816 project - from C to BCPL, but I'm lacking time and enthusiasm for it - as in why go back to Basic when I have a nice BCPL operating system.

(And of-course for a sample set of precisely one it's not exactly going to be portable - and that applies to ALL '816 systems - other than the old ones (Acorn and Apple) the only 'mass produced' '816 system is the Foenix - everything else by everyone else is essentially a one-off.. OK, There's the SNES, but it's not exactly a user usable system for coding on)

Of-course the same can be said for me using BCPL when I have a nice C operating system (Linux) to run it all on... Lifes sometimes somewhat odd at times...

-Gordon

[BigDumbDinosaur]

drogon wrote:

A 65C02 version of EhBasic has already happened - some time back too.

I meant a 65C02 version of the actual MS code, not Lee’s derivation.  One thing I seem to recall is Lee took liberties with the handling of zero page that made porting EhBASIC to some systems difficult.

Granted, there are better, more powerful, microcomputer BASIC implementations than the MS code.  One such version was BASIC 7.0 in the Commodore 128, which had some structured programming features and much better string handling functions (garbage collection was very quick).  BASIC 7.0 wasn’t on the level of BBC BASIC, but was a significant improvement over BASIC 2.0 on the C-64.

Almost all of my BASIC experience is in Business BASIC, mostly Thoroughbred Dictionary-IV, which is far more powerful than any microcomputer BASIC.

[drogon]

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

drogon wrote:

A 65C02 version of EhBasic has already happened - some time back too.

I meant a 65C02 version of the actual MS code, not Lee’s derivation.  One thing I seem to recall is Lee took liberties with the handling of zero page that made porting EhBASIC to some systems difficult.

I don't recall any issues getting the CBM Basic 2.0 to run on my Ruby boards - just change the address of the serial IO routines and off it went. The source code allowed you to trivially place the ZP usage which I dod to suite my system. Applesoft was harder as it was hard-coded with existing addresses for the Apple II monitor.

The floobydust version of EhBasic for the 65C02 was just as easy to implement: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5760

A view of my implementation of CBM Basic 2.0: https://projects.drogon.net/microsoft-basic/

But one big thing - porting/portability. It's not easy.

And here is the issue: (Or just one of many)

When I wrote and published my own TinyBasic, I tried as hard as I could to make it portable. Minimised the IO requirements and published versions for different platforms including the WDC65C134-SXB board. Hoping that others would use these as examples to port to their own systems... Guess how much interest it got?

It went like this:

• "Many" downloads.
• "a few" bits of feedback in comments here/elsewhere and email.
• Just ONE person that I know of actually assembled it and got it working. One.

So with that in-mind, where is the enthusiasm to carry on? To write a new BASIC? I have tried to get others in other forums and channels interested but no. Lets just use MS Basic and be done with it because that's easy and it's how it was.

We're on the edge of extinction, so lets just enjoy what we have while we can.

(But if anyone wants to offer me money for my time and energy to write a new "modern" Basic for the 65C02, then I'm all ears)

Quote:

Almost all of my BASIC experience is in Business BASIC, mostly Thoroughbred Dictionary-IV, which is far more powerful than any microcomputer BASIC.

Great, but you can't compare anything on something that's better than an 8-bit micro. The limitations of an 8-bit CPU, 64K (or banks of 64K), single digit Mhz clock speeds really is a limitation. Even BBC Basic is 16KB and that doesn't cater for the operating system it needs - another 14KB of OS plus 8 to 16KB of disc or network filing systems. My own version of Acorn MOS to enable me to fully run BBC Basic is 10KB plus the additional disc filing system which is on a separate microcontroller written in C...

Applesoft, for all it's slowness (compared to today) did have a good disc filing system that supported random access files. Code development might not have been fast, but with add-on tools (I used something called GPLE - Global Program Line Editor) it was good - one commercial thing I wrote was a VHS Video tape library management system for small places who were renting out tapes... More than adequate for that. But bigger projects? Not really. Even worse, running Applesoft on anything other than an Apple II is virtually impossible - sure I got it to work, but only at a superficial level. No graphics, no filing system. To go further than type in a few lines of code and it gets exponentially harder. The same goes for the other 6502 Basics published by MS. I could type code into the Commodore port I did, my OS supports an "exec" feature where it will read text in from a file as if it were typed, similarly a "spool" function where it would save printed output into a file (so LIST) so program load/save is possible, but it's not easy.

So big thanks to MS for officially publishing the sources, but to use them? I doubt it'll happen in cases other than mere curiosity.

-Gordon

[cjs]

BillO wrote:

Alterations made illegally to a copyrighted work cannot be copyrighted because only the original copyright owner (MS in this case) can authorize the creation of derivative works, such as altered versions of their original work. Unauthorized alterations constitute copyright infringement, and the individual making these changes has no legal basis to claim ownership of the modified work.

I think you are confusing the copyright on the modifications with the copyright on the derived work.

Certainly Lee had, as you said, "no copyright on EhBASIC and had no right to license it." That does not mean that he doesn't own the copyright on just his changes. While he couldn't distribute his modified EhBASIC, he can distribute changes such as, e.g., "Add a new line 1234 saying blah blah blah," and he owns the copyright on that new line.

Quote:

Now that MS has licensed their code under the MIT license, anyone and every one is free to use EhBASIC under the terms of that license.

No, they are not. They are free to use the original MS-BASIC, but MS does not own the copyright on the changed parts; that can be licensed only by Lee and/or his estate.

Quote:

Here is a link to Circular 14. It's not that long and is clear and easy to understand: https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.pdf

Yes. And right at the start it says (emphasis mine), "To be copyrightable, a derivative work must incorporate some or all of a preexisting “work” and add new original copyrightable authorship to that work." Later it says, "The copyright in a derivative work covers only the additions, changes, or other new material appearing for the first time in the work." These make it clear that the copyright in the new material is held by the new author, not the author of the work being derived.

Copyright law is pretty clear: you own the copyright on any original work you create yourself. There is no language that transfers ownership of that copyright to someone else just because your work was a derivative work. You simply can't distribute your derivative work, on part of which you own the copyright, because there's another copyright owner on other parts of the work from whom you need permission.

[BillO]

cjs wrote:

I think you are confusing the copyright on the modifications with the copyright on the derived work.

This is getting ridiculous.

No, I'm not confusing anything. If the modifications were published in a work by itself, that work would be copyrightable. But they weren't, they were published as part of an illegal infringement and are, in context and part of that illegal infringement, under the law in effect (US law), not copyrightable. That's it. No argument. It's done. End of story. That's all she wrote, folks!

His contribution to creating the work "EhBASIC" is totally null and void as far as his or his estate's right to ownership/copyright.

In fact, the act of creating EhBASIC remains an infringement. Even though MS has licensed their code under the MIT license, that is now, not then. They could still sue Lee, or the owners of his estate (if they still claim copyright) for that infringement as it occurred in the past.

Full disclosure here. I am not a lawyer. However, in my 13 years working for Computer Associates, when it was named such, I spent a good part of that time as part of a team defending and prosecuting copyright infringement. I do have actual, rubber to the road, court room experience in this area as a subject matter expert.

This is getting contentious, so now I'm really out. Y'all can fanaticize as you wish. If I ever decide to sell a product with EhBASIC on it, have fun coming after me ...

[cjs]

BillO wrote:

But they weren't, they were published as part of an illegal infringement and are, in context and part of that illegal infringement, under the law in effect (US law), not copyrightable. That's it. No argument. It's done. End of story. That's all she wrote, folks!

Well, that's may be all "she" (whoever that is) wrote, but that doesn't entitle one to ignore the laws written by the U.S. government. As it turns out, 17 U.S. Code § 103 discusses exactly this. The text is, in full (emphasis mine):

• (a) The subject matter of copyright as specified by section 102 includes compilations and derivative works, but protection for a work employing preexisting material in which copyright subsists does not extend to any part of the work in which such material has been used unlawfully.
• (b) The copyright in a compilation or derivative work extends only to the material contributed by the author of such work, as distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the work, and does not imply any exclusive right in the preexisting material. The copyright in such work is independent of, and does not affect or enlarge the scope, duration, ownership, or subsistence of, any copyright protection in the preexisting material.

This is further discussed in the "Notes" tab on that page:

• The second part of the sentence that makes up section 103(a) deals with the status of a compilation or derivative work unlawfully employing preexisting copyrighted material. In providing that protection does not extend to "any part of the work in which such material has been used unlawfully,” the bill prevents an infringer from benefiting, through copyright protection, from committing an unlawful act, but preserves protection for those parts of the work that do not employ the preexisting work. Thus, an unauthorized translation of a novel could not be copyrighted at all, but the owner of copyright in an anthology of poetry could sue someone who infringed the whole anthology, even though the infringer proves that publication of one of the poems was unauthorized.

The above clearly makes this statement (emphasis mine):

BillO wrote:

His contribution to creating the work "EhBASIC" is totally null and void as far as his or his estate's right to ownership/copyright.

wrong if there is any original material in EhBASIC that can be shown not to be derivative work of MS-BASIC.

So certainly it seems that parts of the original work in EhBASIC cannot be copyrighted because, being modifications of the original code that simply slightly modify how it works, they violate the original code's copyright, and MS can distribute a modified MS-BASIC with those changes.

But, as the law says above, this applies only to "part[s] of the work where [MS-BASIC] has been used unlawfully." If there are any parts of the work that do not re-use parts of MS-BASIC, say, a substantial function that has been completely replaced by code clearly unrelated in any way to the original code (excepting the API to call it, use of which is generally considered fair use), Lee would have copyright on that part of the work and MS could not redistribute it.

I am not saying such routines exist in the EhBASIC—in fact, that would have to be decided by a court, not any of us. But it is certainly possible. Consider for example the new random number routine, which is entirely different from the MS version. (Not only is the code different, the entire algorithm is different.) There is certainly a reasonable argument to be made that since the new random number function no common code at all with the MS version beyond that they both use the same instruction set and take parameters at the same memory locations, and could be used as a stand-alone random number function or in another program, the new one "[does not] employ the preexisting work."

Quote:

Y'all can fanaticize as you wish. If I ever decide to sell a product with EhBASIC on it, have fun coming after me ...

I think you meant "fantasize"? Or do you consider us all "fanatics" for disagreeing with you? But anyway, it's statements like this that make be believe you may not understand copyright law as well as you think. Of course we can't come after you: none of us have standing to do so. Only the copyright owner can come after you, and whoever that is right now, it certainly isn't any of us who are participating in this thread.

[drogon]

BillO wrote:

If I ever decide to sell a product with EhBASIC on it, have fun coming after me ...

This has already happened.

And is still happening.

Buy it here..

https://www.sunrise-ev.com/6502.htm

I bought on a few years back. It was part of the inspiration for my 6507 system...

-Gordon

[BillO]

https://media4.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkP ... /giphy.gif

cjs wrote:

Well, that's may be all "she" (whoever that is) wrote, ... (other stuff) ...

Again, what you are saying is only true, if and only if, the derivative work was authorized. EhBASIC was NOT authorized, it constitutes an illegal act of infringement. The author cannot claim copyright on it.

It even says that in clause (a) that you posted.

Quote:

but protection for a work employing preexisting material in which copyright subsists does not extend to any part of the work in which such material has been used unlawfully.

What is it that is preventing you from understanding this? This is why I call you a fanatic. You are clinging onto a unfounded and incorrect belief even though it has been shown to be wrong.

Edit:

1) What Lee/his estate cannot claim copyright on: EhBASIC

2) What Lee/his estate can claim copyright on: A piece of code encompassing a collection of the changes he made to MS BASIC, as long as that collection does not contain even the tiniest piece of MS code.

[BillO]

drogon wrote:

BillO wrote:

If I ever decide to sell a product with EhBASIC on it, have fun coming after me ...

This has already happened.

And is still happening.

Buy it here..

https://www.sunrise-ev.com/6502.htm

I bought on a few years back. It was part of the inspiration for my 6507 system...

-Gordon

Interesting. This came out after Lee's passing. I guess they were hoping MS would not come after them, LOL. Well, I guess they are not really making much profit considering what they are charging

[BigEd]

It seems possible, Bill, that you are very much concentrating on EhBasic as a single thing, as a distributed thing, whereas others are looking on it as a source code work which has many components, as well as the binary that comes from that source code.

On one view, EhBasic as a monolith is either copyright by someone, in its entirety, or it isn't.

On the other view, each component contribution of EhBasic may have copyright held by someone or by several someones.

I hope this helps.