Software License Blather

[Al Christians <achrist@easystreet.com>]

dennison@telepath.com wrote:
> 
> 
> Yes, you can always sue someone. But does the GPL protect CJ in court from
> this charge? That's a bit foggy. The answer probably depends on the relative
> quality of their laywers. :-)
> 

Sad but true, and 'quality of lawyers' might be taken by most to be
an oxymoron.  These kinds of issues sometimes go from abstract 
conjecture to serious business quickly.  Out here in Oregon, we've got
someone who went to jail (ie jail, as in prison) for commercial
theft of software from his employer.  The software he 'stole' from his
employer was never taken off the employer's premises, and the only copy
found in the possession of the thief was on the employer's computer at
the employer's facility.    

One of the ways these puzzles are live for me is that me and my clients
are typically bound by plenty of third party agreements.  Say that my
client spends $million on software licenses from BIGBIGCO. They hire me 
to help them use it, and make me sign a contract that gives me access to
BIGBIGCO's products, but I have to agree to do it by their rules,
which are that I'm doing work for hire for BIGBIGCO. Fine, so far. 

Suppose I look at some piece of code in BIGBIGCO's system written 
for Robert Dewar's old  Cobol compiler and decide that Robert is doing 
much better these days and I rewrite it in Ada.  I give the new version 
to my client.  This is ok, because according to all the legal 
mumbo-jumbo we are tied up with,  BIGBIGCO really owns my code, I know 
that, the client is licensed to use it, and all is happy.  Even if this 
is under GPL because I've used GPL code, this is ok, because both me and 
client are bound to follow GPL if we distribute it further, which we 
can't, so we won't.  

But the reason I stay away from GPL, is that client has employees, and 
if one of them comes into possession of my GPL'd code and carries it 
to another company,  we've got a lifetime of work for seven lawyers 
figuring out how much I owe to whom for setting this mess up.  And about
the same if BIGBIGCO gets a copy of my code that is legally a work for 
hire for them and then distributes it elsewhere without following GPL.

Fortunately, LGPL and similar are becoming much more common than GPL,
and these aren't quite as scary. So, sincere thanks to ACT and everyone 
else who uses LGPL or anything like it, so that GPL doesn't put me into 
the fog between too many lawyers.

Al