Harlequin would like to announce an extension to the SML Programming
Competition to the 30th November, 1997.
This is to provide further time for new students to participate, and to
take advantage of the new Student Edition of MLWorks which is available for
only $99.
For details of the competition or new offer please visit
http://www.harlequin.com/products/ads/ml/ml.html or Email:
·······@harlequin.co.uk.
Regards
Chris Cox, SP Product Marketing, Web:www.harlequin.co.uk,
Tel: +44 (0) 1954 785484, Fax: +44 (0) 1954 785444
Harlequin Ltd, Longstanton House, Woodside, Longstanton, Cambridge, CB4 5BU
In article <············@mistletoe.srv.cs.cmu.edu>,
"Chris Cox" <······@harlequin.co.uk> writes:
> Harlequin would like to announce an extension to the SML Programming
> Competition to the 30th November, 1997.
Why do the rules require that Harlequin hold copyright in all entries?
As the rules stand, it might seem like the competition is a thinly
disguised ploy to cheaply trawl for code or concepts for in-house
or commercial use by Harlequin.
Harlequin says on its web page:
> We will hold copyright of his material to prevent others copying
> the information and publishing it.
but I would have thought that the whole point of the exercise,
(if it was to have been a philanthropic gesture to promote the use
of SML and as a by-product justify "acceptable" advertising on usenet
for Harlequin's "Student Edition") would have been to _encourage_
others to use the example code!
If contestants were allowed to hold copyright in their own entries,
then that in itself would have been enough "to prevent others copying
the information and publishing it."
What's more, Harlequin claims copyright in all _submissions_! Not just
the winning entries which they'll "publish". How, pray tell, would
"others" be able to copy the losing entries which aren't published?
Ideally losing entries shouldn't be subject to any encumbrances at all.
Good programmers certainly aren't going to enter for the prize money!
$500 first prize seems cheap for 5000 lines of SML! Using conventional
estimates for lines-of-code-per-day, that would mean many months of work.
What would the $500 first prize work out to per hour?
If Harlequin had required contestants to put their code in the public
domain, they would have been able to publish it, encourage its use,
and also use it in-house themselves anyway. That might have been a
happier solution.
Mark
--
Mark Staples <usual disclaimers> ···········@cl.cam.ac.uk
voice: +44 1223 334688 http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/ms204/
snail: MCR, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge CB2 1TA, England
PhD student Computer Laboratory University of Cambridge