Every so often a letter arrives at the DDJ offices that demonstrates a reader's concern over the issue of software copyright. Given that we often publish both articles and source code listings that include an author's "All Rights Reserved" copyright notice, the question has been raised as to what rights (if any) the reader has. A strict reading of copyright law would lead you, after all, to the conclusion that even photocopying a section of a magazine you'd bought would be copyright infringement. Given the current litigious climate of the software industry, it's probably a good idea that we at DDJ at least give you a statement of our policies and attitudes concerning copyrights.
Perhaps the most prevalent confusion arises in the infamous Public Domain. The law (in this case) is pretty clear: any work placed in the public domain is available for anyone to use for any purpose. Pretty simple. Yet all too often we receive manuscripts and programs at DDJ with copyright notices that read something like this: "Released to the public domain. Commercial use prohibited." A legal paradox. How in the world can you enforce a right that you've given away?
So if you've been wondering why DDJ publishes so much code with author copyright notices instead of donations to the public domain, that paradox should be a pretty good clue. Giving away all your rights to a program is an irreversible step and while most programmers like to share their ideas and programs with others, nobody likes to feel exploited. Based on my informal polling of programmers, that's a big problem with giving away software. in the last few years we've seen a number of bulletin boards, information utilities, and bulk disk vendors make more than a little money off the distribution of public domain software.
Given the nature of the industry and DDJ's tradition of sharing information with our fellow programmers, it was clear that relying on articles dealing with PD software alone wasn't going to cut it. The option of standing over our authors with a whip and trying to beat them into submissions (so to speak) just wasn't appealing.
Our solution to the problem is not final or even particularly noble. We just print a magazine every month with articles, columns, and programs. We pay the authors for the rights to print their articles and source code. The authors get the usual fame and glory, a bagful of nickels, and an occasional letter complaining that their program makes the Fastbomb C compiler blow up.
And what about the reader? What are your rights to the software? Well, despite all the lawsuits and paranoia in the software industry, the answer to that is pretty straightforward. All of us--the authors, the editors, and the publisher--agree that once you buy an issue of DDJ you are entitled to use that issue's source code listings in any manner you want in the privacy of your own home, for the satisfaction of your intellectual curiosity. This is our family definition of "fair use." Copying the code directly into your own programs and then distributing it is not what we call fair use. We call it tacky. Worse, our lawyers call it illegal. If you find yourself in a situation where you'd like to professionally use some code that appears in DDJ, please give us or the author a call. Odds are strong that a little politeness will be rewarded with a license that costs little (perhaps just a credit line), and everyone will feel better.