On 08/02/2009 06:51 AM, Robert Keller wrote:
On Aug 1, 2009, at 4:04 PM, nescivi wrote:

  
On Saturday 01 August 2009 13:36:20 laseray@gmail.com wrote:
    
On Saturday 01 August 2009 11:32:24 nescivi wrote:
      
On Wednesday 29 July 2009 00:49:09 David Robillard wrote:
        
The raw code seems okay over there. Running ant to make a dist
package results in something that violates the GPL if a user  
were
to distribute it.
                
No, it does not, and even if it did, this would not be a GPL
violation on Prof. Keller's part.
              
Yes, it does. I just did it a little while ago. There is no  
license
file in it. I checked the dist/zip targets.
            
so that is unfortunate, and should be corrected to avoid confusion.
But, it would still be the user distributing the binary violating  
and not
Keller.
        
This was not the point though. Just pointing out that a user/ 
developer
could inadvertently start distributing packages that do violate. As  
far
as I am concerned, a little bit more diligence should be directed  
to these
kinds of issues before distribution takes place. In the Impro-Visor 4
source package I distribute (on Improvisor at SF) I have fixed this  
so that
it won't happen.

On another related point. I am still wondering what is up with the
copyright changes that took place between version 2.04 and 3.39. I  
have the
2.04 source and I see that there are a number of people who have  
copyrights
indicated in the GPL headers for that. Then when you look at the 3.39
headers it only says that the copyrights belong to Keller and his
educational institution. What is the situation with that?

Either everybody transferred their copyrights to him and the  
institution or
this is another set of violations (one for each person who had their
respective copyright removed/changed). Personally, I would like see
everybody who did work on that have their proper copyrights  
indicated.
Some clarification would be helpful.
      
Bob Keller has to comment on that for the precise situation, but it  
may well
be that student's work in his institution, are copyrighted by the  
institution.

sincerely,
Marije
    


We employ the students, so we own the copyright.

  

I understand that it's a Sunday and your being pushed to be accountable however this statement is slightly inflammatory so I have a couple of questions.

- Am I correct that all releases from your institute are licensed to your institute and any contributions from your students are also owned by your institute?

- Do the students sign a disclaimer that says that all code they provide to you is owned by the institute?

- Out of interest, do you pay your students for the code they give to you? I assume they pay you for the courses they participate in?

If you originally attribute the copyright to your students then it is confusing and legally on very shaky ground to later decide that they actually work for you and all code released by your institute is owned by your institute.

If however you have a signed document from each student that cedes ownership to the institute then you are well within your rights.  However it would be courteous to let everyone who uses your code know that this is the case. 

You are treading a fine line by claiming ownership of gpl code and not attributing license to the original code as defined in the gpl.

Not to mention that attempting to bypass the gpl while relying on gpl licensed code for the backbone of your app is a violation of the principals of the gpl and is bound to cause some people round here to get upset and want to clarify things.

This whole problem could have been solved if you had originally provided Ray with access to the source when he asked for it, but in essence you should be making your code available from the start at a public location.











Bob

Robert Keller
Csilla & Walt Foley Professor
Computer Science
Harvey Mudd College




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