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From: Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com>
Subject: Re: "proprietary", was Re: ada on linux
Date: 2000/05/30
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In article <8h0rne$h92$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
  Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> wrote:
> In article <8h0qd0$g1q$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
> So unless you have a very definite statement, preferably in
> writing signed, an email message is unlikely to be taken as
> a formal contract, or at least authenticity questions can
> easily be raised in this context, you may be in trouble.
> The statement must CLEARLY give the author's permission
> for incorporating the code under whatever licence you are
> using.

I can see where you are comming from here. But I'm afraid that requiring
a formal written and notarized contract for every little submission
would have a very chilling effect on such a small project. I know for a
fact that I don't really have the money to develop such a contract. Note
that my main co-contributor so far (Christ Grein) is based in Germany.
How do I know what the legal ramifications of that are? Perhaps there's
some law there that doesn't allow people to sign away copyright intrests
in the way my homespun contract requires. It would take a true
international IP laywer to sort that out, and I just can't afford to do
that.

> There is a lot of sloppiness in these kind of procedures with
> code wandering around, but that sloppiness can come back to
> haunt you in court later on.

True. But when you are talking total hobbyist/volunteer efforts, I'm
afraid a certian amount of such legal "slop" is going to be unavoidable.
If I do something email-based that makes it clear what is going to
happen to a submission, and that the submitting person agrees to that,
that ought to get me about 90% of the way there, without turning off
prospective submittors too much. It should at least prevent
misunderstandings, like the one in your scenario. It would be absolutely
no defense against a company with deep pockets and a commitment to
breaking the license. But at my present financial level, no amount of
formal written documents would save me in that sceario either.

--
T.E.D.

http://www.telepath.com/~dennison/Ted/TED.html


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