Re-using copyrighted code

[Mark Janssen]

> What is clear is the mandate that sets up the framework in the first
> place:
>
>   "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing
>   for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to
>   their respective Writings and Discoveries"
>                 -- USC Article I, Section 8
>
> If it doesn't "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", then
> it misses the spirit of the law as drafted.

Exactly, academia has known what this is intuitively for some time.
It's just the commercial world and the populace at large that is
confused and exploited.  This also disproves Steven D'Aprano's thesis
that monopoly rights is its purpose, but no.

> Granted, courts seem to miss that interpretation on a regular basis,
> leaving me a bit disgusted at the whole mess. :-/

Yeah, and stranger is that people *defend* the interpretation which
*takes away* their rights!

Bizarre!
-- 
MarkJ
Tacoma, Washington