[Polytopes-general] Software Copyrights, Patents, and Free Software

[Evan K. <ko...@cs...>]

Dewar's talk is in 11 days.  Are there any updates on our promotion 
efforts?

e.

Here is the abstract:
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This talk will give some general background on copyrights and patents 
(including looking at the original constitutional basis for these, and we will 
look at what Thomas Jefferson had to say at the time, and what Ayn Rand wrote 
more recently!) We will look at how these "rights" (quotations very much 
intended) relate to software which has unique characteristics not found in 
other technologies. Finally we will look at Free Software and Open Source (what 
these terms mean, and how they relate to copyrights and patents).

No prior knowledge of either copyright/patent law or technical computer 
knowledge is required other than a basic knowledge of what computer programming 
is about (e.g. the relation of source and object code). In fact a lot of what 
you think you know about copyrights etc is probably wrong anyway :-). Certainly 
if you listened to Bill Gates definition of Open Source the other day you will 
not have been enlightened.

This talk is being sponosored by NYU's ACM (Association for Computing 
Machinery) and CaNYU (Computer Advocacy at NYU) but is suitablle for a wide 
audience, computers at the University (which is a pretty big group these days!)

Robert Dewar is an Emeritus Professor of Computer Science at the Courant 
Institute. He has published numerous technical articles in the field, and is 
author of a book on Microprocessor Architectures. He is currently President and 
CEO of AdaCore Technologies, a company that provides software used in building 
large critical projects in such areas as air traffic control, commercial and 
military avoionics, and medical instrumentation. AdaCore uses a commercial Free 
Software / Open Source approach.  He has served as an expert witness in several 
important patent and copyright cases in Federal Courts.