On Tue, 20 Dec 2005, Wouter van Ooijen wrote:

>> The point is that the GPL was elaborated *after* a number of
>> episodes in which public domain code appeared in someone's
>> products for a lot of money and nothing could be done about it.
>
> What is 'elaborated' in this sense?

Elaborated = conceived, embodied and presumably verified (by lawyers).

>> Not only that but patents were issued on certain items afaik.
>> This not only had PD removed from PD but others effectively
>> prevented from using it too. Very clever.
>
> You are mixing things up.

No I am not. In those cases where PD in the 'gray' zone was grabbed and 
patented the original authors were denied any futher rights on it 
(including the right of using it in the public domain).

>> Note that most people who relinquish code into the PD or publish it
>> without a proper license would be very surprised
>
> If they licnese it without a 'propper' license they should not be
> surprised when their code is used as allowed by the license they did
> use, which is not necessarily the way they intended it to be used.

You are contradicting yourself imho. If the act of publication ensures 
automatic copyright, then an additional license would not be necessary. 
Events prove that it is not sufficient and that a license is necessary 
anyway.

>> So some clever people got together and decided to find a way that 
>> would defeat further attempts at doing that, if possible using their 
>> own tools (the tools of the misappropriators, i.e. the fear of being 
>> sued and assorted legal shenanigans connected to license and patent 
>> law). So they made a legal document conceived to thwart further tries 
>> at this.
>
> You got the order of events all wrong. There was no PD software as we
> know it know at the moment Stallman created the GPL.

There was a lot of it on usenet and elsewhere. The first GPL was worded 
in 1983:

http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/timeline/engelbart-timelines.html

BBSes existed since 1978 and usenet, where huge amunts of source code 
used to be published, since 1979.

>> So the GPL is a 'low cost' patent disclosure if you want.
>
> no need for GPL for that, *any* publication is a 'low cost patent
> disclosure' in the sense that it can be used as prior art lateron.

One wishes that it would be but it turns out not to be so, by precedent 
...

Peter
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