From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.1 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_05,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,365c587e3030d8f6 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Al Christians Subject: Software License Blather Date: 1998/11/20 Message-ID: <3655D794.82E85B02@easystreet.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 413985877 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <364BE12F.F38A285C@cts.com> <72inaf$8it$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <72pcj5$eg6$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <732be5$dd3$1@news.nyu.edu> <3654CC2B.63DD8D5D@easystreet.com> <734eo8$41v$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: news14.ispnews.com 911594790 206.103.56.12 (Fri, 20 Nov 1998 15:46:30 EDT) Organization: Trillium Resources Corporation MIME-Version: 1.0 NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 15:46:30 EDT Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1998-11-20T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: 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