8" floppy project

[Joe R.]

At 12:00 PM 8/10/04 -0400, you wrote:
>>>> Name another computer with as many choices of OS and as many
>>>> versions, including third party and public domain OSs.
>>> Public domain?  While admittedly I haven't specifically looked, I
>>> don't think I've ever seen a public domain OS for anything,
>> What about FreeDOS?  Or they just call it that for kicks?
>
>I imagine they call it that because it's free, for some value of free.
>While I was unable to find an explicit license in a brief poke around
>the freedos pages, I pulled over their boot floppy image, and it's
>certainly got enough copyright notices embedded in it.  (This is rather
>disturbing, since if it's copyrighted but with no license grant, it is
>probably illegal to do anything with it in most jurisdictions.)

   That's not my understanding. I've seen several pieces of software where
the author specificly stated the software was free but he also stated that
he had copyrighted it in order to keep people from making modifications and
then selling it as their own work. Wheather or not it's copyrighted
ultimatly has nothing to do with it's cost. It can be "freeware",
"shareware" or regular commercail software no matter what the copyright
status is.



>
>Note that "public domain" is a specific legal term with a specific
>meaning, and does not equal "free" for any of the common meanings of
>"free" as applied to software.

   I don't agree with the last part of your statement. To most people
Public Domain equates to free. "Public domain" means the "public" owns it
legally but it's still free in that anyone can use it for free.

   Joe


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