Talk:Software copyright

Missing an important point that many would like to know

Apart from copying and redistibuting someone else's work, how much of that work are you allowed to replicate in your own software. For example, if someone wanted to program a word-like-software how much of the word features is he/she allowed to use as his own noting that he will program it from scratch.

Possibly biased

I tagged this article as possibly NPOV because the first sentence is awkward:

Software copyright, the relatively recent extension of copyright law to software, allowed a market for proprietary software to flourish for some time.

I would have expected a definition of software copyright and what is offered instead is a curious retrospective, wishful, unsupported claim about the alleged decline of proprietary software. Please help to make this article less NPOV. Cheers. --Edcolins 19:35, August 26, 2005 (UTC)

I changed that sentence to read "has allowed", so it now does not suggest that the proprietary software market has dissipated. I've left the NPOV tag, though, until someone can look at the rest of the article more thoroughly. ArthurDenture 18:49, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

This article is unlikely ever to be completely unbiased due to the complicated nature of the subject and the many points of view. This problem is exacerbated by the practice of posting the arguments against software copyright on a separate page, which are also tagged NPOV. Possibly a way to solve this would be simply to post a clear indication of this fact within the context of the page itself, as well as at the end of the article, which sometimes is not donePhil alias Harry 23:25, 3 November 2005 (UTC)23:24, 3 November 2005 (UTC) (sorry, i was for some reason not logged in when i hit the save button)

- Keanu Reeves

I have checked this article for any inaccuracies and can now confirm that it is correct. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.92.152.221 (talk • contribs) 14:54, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Wow, this is just about the worst wikipedia article I've ever read. There's not even a summary of what software copyrights govern--it just skips into crap right away. I'm not especially qualified, but can someone who is please clean this up?

This article screams POV. I've tagged it as such and am endeavoring to clean up.--Nowa 21:56, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Tags

I've attempted to remove POV, clean up article and add more of world view. OK to remove tags?--Nowa 01:59, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I would say leave the tags until you are done and everyone agrees. If I can help I will try and find information on the subject and that is not straight legal jargon. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Robotboy2008 (talk • contribs) 07:17, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

added " and because programs were regarded as a simple list of instructions for the computer to process and hence not copyrightable". if that needs to be rendered into legalese someone conversant should do it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.125.110.223 (talk) 21:12, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

yes this is quite true but it is hard to show a broad overview of everyones opinions in what is meant to be a factual page. How is fact meant to be displayed if everybody has different opinions? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.68.207.185 (talk) 19:29, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Proposed reorganization

This page will be revised over the next week as part of the IP WikiProject. I intend to recast the overview in more descriptive terms, and then break the US section into subsections for history, rights retained by copyright holders, rights granted to others, etc. Asrabkin (talk) 23:18, 15 September 2009 (UTC)