Re: lynx-dev More on lynx copyright

[Klaus Weide]

On Tue, 28 Sep 1999, Brett Glass wrote:
> At 09:48 PM 9/28/99 -0500, Klaus Weide wrote:
> >What attempts did you make to find out, and who have you tried to
> >contact?
> 
> We've searched the Web and sent e-mail to CERN. Like the University
> of Kansas, CERN has not responded.

Well, you might get a reply from W3C.  Since they have taken over
responsibility for libwww development from CERN in some sort of way, 
they should know about the status of the ancestor code.

> >   Since presumably you want to build a commercial product
> >based on the code, you have much more incentive to pursue this than
> >DK or anyone else here.  Are you willing to share?
> 
> Yes. Are you?

Sure, under the conditions you already know (and find unacceptable).

Under unspecified hypothetical conditions which have no chance of
becoming reality?  Not much point in answering that question.

Or are we still talking about sharing information regarding the
copyright and license status?  I don't have any information that I
have withheld from you (at least not intentionally), I even gave you
some of my thoughts (my understanding of the status).  But let me
share this, too: if you follow the "About Lynx" link in the main Lynx
Help page (of any recent version), you will find a link to Michael
Grobe's Web page at the University of Kansas, complete with postal
address and ways to reach him by phone, fax, or pager.  (No, I don't
know whether they work.)  Last-Modified according to HTTP, Fri, 29 Jan
1999 03:21:16 GMT, which may not mean all that much, but I guess he's
still around.

Incidentally, on Michael Grobe's page there is a link near the top to
<http://www.cc.ukans.edu/~grobe/early-lynx.html>.  Recommended reading
for others on this list interested in the earlier history.  Among the
other stuff there is the following, relevant to the current topic:

   There was some consideration of taking Lynx commercial, and there were
   several offers (by 3 letter companies) to license Lynx. Unfortunately
   there were numerous contributors (We counted some 18 during one search
   through the code.) during the early history of Lynx, making "Statement
   of Originality" a nightmare.

(Note how the number 18 was already considered prohibitive for special
licensing!  The real number of contributors was of course higher then
and is much higher now.)

   I moved to put the KU portions of Lynx into the public domain in 1996,
   but the lynx-dev group preferred GNU status, so Lynx was declared to
   be under GNU General Public License in 1996?

(IOW, GPL was a conscious choice by contributors, it didn't happen by
accident as you might want to believe.)

   Besides that, good authority assured me that it was impossible to make
   money on a client. (They apparently didn't consider making money on
   the hope engendered by a client.)

(And how about that? :))


    Klaus