6 Apr
2005
6 Apr
'05
11:52 p.m.
On Wed, 06 Apr 2005 14:56:19 -0500
Shane <lists(a)itsagesolutions.com> wrote:
Jan,
Thank you for your comments. I should clarify from the perspective of
an independent software developer with no previous relationship to the
company issuing the NDA that may or may not be valid or legal...
First of all, the (hypothetical) NDA requires that the copyright to any
work rendered for the company based on the codebase in question be
retained by the company.
Thats the case with all work for hire situations.
Some parts are developed in house, some are
GPL. The NDA also essenstially asks that I surrender my right under the
GPL or other applicable licenses to redistribute any part of this work.
This is till work for hire right? If you were working for microsoft,
would you expect to be able to redistribute the stuff you wrote for
them?
While this company has stated that they will release
the entire codebase
under GPL into the public domain
Careful, GPL and public domain are two different things. GPL means that
someone owns the copyright but gives the user the rights allowed by the
GPL. Public domain means that the original author has given up any claim
to copyright.
Would this have any change on the legal status of such
an agreement??
That sounds sensible.
Or
is it simply an individually binding agreement between the company and a
developer?
I would go for this interpretation.
Erik
--
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
Erik de Castro Lopo nospam(a)mega-nerd.com (Yes it's valid)
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
"OS X is great that way. I put a copy of OS X on my coffee table,
and it hasn't been hacked yet. Yes, I am using it as a server. I
serve several meals on it every week." -- Anthony Minkoff