Subject: Re: [lojban] jbofi'e version 0.36 released

From: "Robert J. Chassell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 08:06:40 -0500 (EST)

> 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 [email-masked]
Rattlesnake Enterprises http://www.rattlesnake.com