Source code

[Peter Hansen]

Cliff Wells wrote:
> On Mon, 2002-09-16 at 13:17, BT wrote:
> 
>>Ok, let's say I make a software in two years and I market it on internet.
>>The software is good and sell some copy.
>>You find the software, like it, change the name, add some feature and resell
>>it. My time: 2 years, yours: 1 month.
> 
> And that would be illegal, hence the suggestion to *copyright* your
> work.

Just a note about the copyright issue, as I agree with most of the
comments about the futility of spending much, and often any, effort
obscuring the source.  (There are disassemblers for almost any
processor on the planet, and most of the value is not in the code
anyway, but in the more concrete representations of the requirements
behind the program, such as the user interface designs and the
overall feature set.)

Copyright is actually a passive thing now, as opposed to active.
That is, you don't have "to copyright your work", because unless
you explicitly disclaim the copyright, you automatically get it.

As I recall, this was not always the case in at least the U.S.,
but has been the case for a number of years now.  In other words,
if you don't write something like "placed in the public domain"
then you still have copyright on it and could take steps in
courts of law to recover lost income if someone else attempts
to profit from your work without permission.

There *are* steps you can take that are considered by some to
increase the strength of the copyright (registering it officially
and so forth), but others believe this is mostly a waste of time.

The usual disclaimers about lawyers and advice on Usenet apply...

-Peter