Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ratfiv programming language

Old discussion from vfd

Discussion concluded and article kept on May 18, 2004

I'm not sure if this belongs here on as a copyvio. Something needs to be done. -Rholton 02:12, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

• Keep - There's no copy violation, the distribution was placed in the public domain when it was released on the DECUS tape. WPWoodJr 05:29, 9 May 2004 (UTC)
• Keep: seems to be public domain jaredwf 14:52, 9 May 2004 (UTC)
• Keep. I'd be happier if someone researched the status of the DECUS material a bit, though. Certainly at the time contributors and users generally understood it to be public domain. I did some clicking on the archive link http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/computer-science/history/pdp-11/rsx/decus/rsx82a/330015/ to see if there was any explicit statement about it's being public domain, and I couldn't find it. In 1982, copyright registration was required within a year of publication to obtain protection, or something, so the absence of a copyright notice is evidence--but not, I think proof--of absence of copyright. And, of course, copyright was the only form of IP protection for software, which couldn't be patented then. Actually, now that I think about it, I am not sure that some individual contributions to the DECUS library contained GPL-like statements in them that tried to prevent their commercial use, so I'm not sure that "public domain" is 100.0000% strictly correct. I trust that this discussion, including this babbling, will get placed on the Talk page when the VfD debate is over. Dpbsmith 00:59, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

http://www.decus.org/encompass/software/index.shtml saith:

"The DECUS Software Library features a large collection of public domain software, containing hundreds of programs and application packages contributed by users from around the world...The DECUS Library operates as a software clearinghouse, recruiting and distributing freely distributable software products through a network of DECUS Chapters throughout the world. The DECUS Library does not generate or test the software, so all programs and information are provided on an "AS IS" basis.

That boilerplate sounds very familiar.

I've exchanged messages with User:WPWoodJr, who originally posted this article. William P. Wood, Jr. is the author of the Ratfiv compiler, and WPWoodJr has added a statement to the talk page that he authored the compiler. I don't see that there's really any question left as to copyvio. I now suggest we move this to Cleanup. Sooner that the usual 5 days would be fine with me. -Rholton 02:15, 11 May 2004 (UTC)