From bob@RATTLESNAKE.COM Wed Mar 28 05:06:42 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: bob@rattlesnake.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_4); 28 Mar 2001 13:06:42 -0000 Received: (qmail 19392 invoked from network); 28 Mar 2001 13:06:40 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l10.egroups.com with QMQP; 28 Mar 2001 13:06:40 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO megalith.rattlesnake.com) (140.186.114.245) by mta2 with SMTP; 28 Mar 2001 13:06:39 -0000 Received: by rattlesnake.com via sendmail from stdin id (Debian Smail3.2.0.111) for lojban@yahoogroups.com; Wed, 28 Mar 2001 08:06:40 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 08:06:40 -0500 (EST) To: cowan@ccil.org Cc: bob@RATTLESNAKE.COM, lojban@yahoogroups.com In-reply-to: (message from John Cowan on Tue, 27 Mar 2001 20:59:07 -0500 (EST)) Subject: Re: [lojban] jbofi'e version 0.36 released Reply-to: bob@rattlesnake.com References: X-eGroups-From: "Robert J. Chassell" From: "Robert J. Chassell" > have said: "You have two choices: to give up now or to lose later. It > is cheaper for you to give up now. So give up now." Not necessarily. It may just have been "Why risk being sued by these armadillos? Well, that is one good reason to give up. ...will the FSF assist with any GPLed code, whether it is FSF-owned or not? The FSF will assist, and does, if you provide a proper, non-exclusive legal assignment of copyright to the FSF. The FSF must accept the assignment. Also, as a very important practical matter, the paperwork must include appropriate disclaimers from your employer or university that state that you have the legal right to make the assignment. Otherwise, it will not be clear that your action was not in error. For example, last May I met a woman working for IBM in Scotland. She is also working on her mathematics PhD at the University of Glasgow. But she had to delay beginning her dissertation because IBM claimed they would own it, not her, and would restrict distribution of it and the mathematical code it contained. Since IBM is becoming more friendly to freedom, she expected to sort this out; but this is the sort of issue one runs into. Also, please note that more and more companies and universities are claiming that they own *all* your work, even work you do on your own time without using any of their resources. I personally come out of another generation: to my mind, if I build a tree house on my land on my time, I should own it. Same for software. But that is not the current interpretation of many work or study contracts. You may continue to own the tree house, but not the software. Depending on the legal reading, you may have no right to determine how or whether your software may be looked at by others or kept secret or distributed or changed. The FSF has no legal standing to assist with GPL'd code to which it has no rights. In addition, as a practical matter, the copyright on the software must be registered. Otherwise, theives do not have to pay any penalties for theft and threats are ineffective. This is sometimes an issue, since programmers often forget to register copyright in a formal manner. (Under current law, all works are copyrighted by default; there is no `public domain' any more. But statutory damages, the ones companies fear, are only awarded if the work is registered.) And, by the way, it should be obvious that I am not a lawyer. When you deal with these issues, please talk to a lawyer and please remember some rather good advice: Any lawyer can write you a contract. Only a good lawyer will write you a contract that wins in court. The whole point of having contracts and licenses is to settle disputes. Most disputes should be settled amicably out of court. Indeed, people mostly should not even realize they are in a dispute, but think of the process as merely one of clarifying their rights and obligations. But occasionally there is no civilized alternative to court. -- Robert J. Chassell bob@rattlesnake.com Rattlesnake Enterprises http://www.rattlesnake.com