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The eclectic nature of FUDGIT makes it a borderline program.
I would like to include the following comments on copyrights.
Some Definitions
================
Scientific Community: By "Scientific Community" is meant the whole of
researchers in industries, universities and government agencies,
students as well as individuals making research on their own.
Software Developers: By "Software Developers" is meant all the
people writing or selling softwares with commercial purposes.
Publicly Available Sources: By "Publicly Available Sources" is meant
the pool of all source codes, algorithms and ideas that can be found
in publicly available scientific journals, publicly available
educational books, public domain source code, algorithms and ideas, or
source code, algorithms and ideas aimed at helping the Scientific
Community. That is, Publicly Available Sources are publicly available
material that can be part of higher education programs.
Progressive Copyrights
======================
People involved in the Scientific Community need access to the most
recent developments to continue their own research. At the same time,
the same people share their most recent discoveries to the rest of the
Scientific Community. Standard Copyrights apply to the commercial
applications of their results.
Source code raised the problem that for the first time, the research
product is deeply involved in the research process. For the first
time, restrictions are being put on a fundamental research tool. This
is why the traditional way of thinking about Copyrights is obsolete.
Copyrights were implemented with the idea of protecting the commercial
interests of the owner. Thus, standard Copyrights give the owner the
exclusive rights of having commercial applications of his/her
implementation of an idea. However, some copyrights are much too
restrictive concerning scientific applications. Sometimes, old ideas
suddenly become protected because a group of Software Developers
claim Copyrights for pieces of code that freely existed for a long
time already, or are the straightforward representation of a given idea
in a given language. This simply does not make sense, and for this
reason, more realistic copyright procedures are required.
Progressive Copyrights should give the author the full commercial
rights but leaves the Scientific Community the right to use the source
code, the algorithms and the ideas for their own purposes. It does not
allow Software Developers to use the source code for commercial
applications, but they are free to use the ideas included in the
source code. In other words, Software Developers cannot make money
from the hard work someone else did. If they want to do so, they have
to agree with the people owning the Progressive Copyrights.
Progressive Copyrights should apply to all Publicly Available Sources.
From the moment a source code is published and becomes publicly
available, the people from the whole Scientific Community have the
right to use it for their own purposes.
A small group of Software Developers cannot claim Copyrights for
source code, algorithms and ideas that have been around for a while,
tested, improved, and commented by the whole Scientific Community.
A University student cannot start in life with a Bachelor degree and
have part of it copyrighted!
Progressive Copyrights are more a way of thinking than a legal
matter. I just hope that this way of thinking will spread in the
Scientific Community. After all, Progressive Copyrights are just
common sense! Despite Software Developers lobby.
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