Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2001 00:30:12 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: kruptos@netzero.net (Kevin Brunelle) Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: C style continued.... (Craig and Terry) Message-ID: <200101240030.RAA05043@usr08.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <3A6E03C7.79F32AAE@netzero.net> from "Kevin Brunelle" at Jan 23, 2001 05:20:55 PM
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> Okay, I was not able to find out for certain, but I believe that the > school retains the right to own the rights to all work done for classes. I'm not a lawyer, but I've had to deal with this topic and those like it (e.g. non-competition agreements, assignment of patent rights, etc.) during a professional career of over two decades. Ask the University legal council; they are there to answer such questions. I won't comment on specific hearsay since it could have been garbled in the translation, and was out of context. I will make a couple of general comments based on my own experience, though: 1) No matter what license you use, you can always release code under a different license, so long as it is not a derivative work based on code under a particular license. Derivative works of GPL'ed code are GPL'ed. If you can get assignment of rights, you can release the code under a different license. This is what The Free Software Foundation required for the GNU utilities, and it's what the Regents of the University of California, Berkeley required for BSD UNIX contributions. 2) You retain all rights to your code, unless you have entered into a work for hire contract, or otherwise explicitly ceded those rights (this is called an assignment of rights) under conract. Contracts are not legally binding, without consideration. 3) Most of his assumptions about license are incorrect, since GPL does not require that you publish the code, and you only grant rights when you publish under a particular license, so you can create proprietary derivate works of GPL'ed code, all you want. 4) When working as a team, if the intent is publication, there should be a single license, since publication should be useful. A UCBL/GPL licensed combination is not legal to distribute as precompiled binaries. 5) GPL'ed style guides and assignment notes and directions have severability. Unless your code is derived from his code, it's not enforcible. For "directions", see point #2. IMO, if he forces you to use his code as a starting base for every project, he's not teaching you how to do what you are paying him to teach you, unless you are paying him to teach you how to write only parts of programs, never a whole product. If you have to live with this guy, I'd really go after use of process patented algorithms, particularly those belonging to your university. I understand what the guy thinks he is achieving, but he's not operating on sound legal advice. As a former IBM employee, IBM refused to let us use GPL'ed code that might embody IBM patents, on the legal theory that it would grant royalty-free license to use those patents, and in granting that to one, federal law requires you grant it to others, on a non-discriminatory basis. I trust their lawyers interpretation of the law. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200101240030.RAA05043>