If an author creates an excellent accounting
program and protects it with only a copyright, someone else could look at the program, rewrite it in a different
language, and sell the new version without violating the copyright of the original creator.
Software companies usually protect their intellectual property by distributing only the object code, the
machine language program, and protecting the object code with copyright. Companies protect the source code
as a trade secret by keeping it confidential. What the user buys is not the software itself, but a license to use the
software. Usually the license agreement grants the user the right to make a copy of the software for backup
purposes, but it may not even permit that. The license agreement may also prohibit the user from disassembling
the object code in an attempt to recover a version of source code. Note that the user may not copy the software
and distribute it to anyone else, for pay or for free, without violating the copyright.
There are those who argue that society??™s interests are better served when software source code is distributed
freely. When no one owns the intellectual property in software, they argue, many people can contribute to the
product, and this benefits all.
Pages:
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473