Any updates on the license problem?

[BillO]

BigEd wrote:

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.

I edited this into my response to cjs.

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.

[cjs]

BillO wrote:

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.

The author cannot claim copyright on the derived work, correct. That does not affect the author's ability to claim copyright on pieces of his own work that are not derived from MS-BASIC. What is preventing you from understanding this?

Quote:

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.

Apparently you do understand it. This is what I've been saying all along. So we are in agreement here.

BigEd wrote:

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

Or by several someones. If there are any parts of EHBasic that are not derived from MS-BASIC, they are copyright by Lee/his estate, and MS has no right to redistribute them (or derive work from them) unless the acquire a license to do so.

Note that I'm not saying it's actually the case that EHBasic contains such parts. I've suggested that the new and entirely different random number routine might be such a part, but if you really want to know if that's the case, it needs to be decided by a court.

[BigEd]

What is surely now true is that anyone could pick up MSBasic sources as now licensed, and use them as a starting point to make an Enhanced MSBasic, licensed compatibly.

That person could even take the ideas that Lee implemented, and re-implement those of them which appealed. As well as other ideas which Lee didn't implement, of course.

[cjs]

Yup. Though from a practical point of view, simply just taking EhBASIC and building on that is probably the better strategy. Not only are substantial parts, and possibly all, of it not copyrightable, but the current copyright owner probably doesn't even know that they own the copyright, or that EhBASIC even exists.

Let's remember that, in the U.S. at least, granting government-enforced restrictions on copying works and ideas so that people can make money is not the purpose of copyright and patent law, it's a method of implementing the actual purpose, which is "[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." (This is why the various copyright term extensions were so heinous: they were clearly not necessary for this purpose because it was extending the terms of things that had already been created, thus demonstrating that the shorter terms were already doing the job.)