Re: [ARMini-support] Insignia / copyright manual
- From: Steve Fryatt <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: armini-support@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 12 May 2018 12:08:22 +0100
On 12 May, Jim Lesurf wrote in message
<56f6f1ffddjcgl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
In article <gemini.p8j2ax00okz1v02cc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Alan Wrigley
<alan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I think you could therefore make a good argument that when the publisher
is no longer physically capable of publishing, e.g. through insolvency,
death or whatever, the author should be free to grant a licence to
anyone else, unless copyright was explicitly reassigned.
I agree. I'd like to see that. But as it stands, the law seems to be that
a business may have its 'assets' sold off at liquidation, and then they
get passed on again, etc. Then the author (or their heirs) can totally
lose contact with who may own the rights. All they know is that they
signed them away. Quite often we may have some company that doesn't even
*know* it owns these rights.
That doesn't seem to be the case in the two situations that we're discussing
here, though. Both Insignia and Open Vector did revert back to their
authors. The former is available as Freeware (open source would be good);
the latter as true Open Source.
The issue is the documentation. I don't know the situation with Insignia,
but in the case of OpenVector (which is why I raised it), the manual was
written by someone at 4Mation and *not* by Jonathan Marten. As a result, the
copyright of the manual was never Jonathan's to start with, let alone revert
back afterwards. He's very clear about this on his website.
It might be that the manuals' copyright holders would be equally happy to
make their work available, but that nobody has managed to ask them yet. ISTR
someone -- ROOL? -- observing that many of the copyright holders that they
contacted were surprised that anyone was still interested in their work from
the 1990s.
It might also be that the people in question /are/ in discussions over the
issue, but with wider implications. Some might hold the rights to other
software as well (ISTR that 4Mation do, for example, and that their name has
come up as "ongoing" in discussions before), and this could be harder nut
to crack if the code there is tangled up with current products in some way
(or is perceived to be, because that's easier than checking).
It's better to follow the rules than to decide "it's only a manual" and
distributing something without permission -- especially if so doing ends up
damaging other negotiations. I can think of at least one key piece of
software (not being discussed here) which was lost to the platform
completely as a result of the author and copyright holder being angered by
users' behaviour whilst talks were underway to pass the source code on to
enable further active development.
--
Steve Fryatt - Leeds, England
http://www.stevefryatt.org.uk/
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