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Balancing Third Party "Ownership" Against The GPL?
hooptie asks: "For the past three years, I've been employed by a contract agency to develop medical outcomes measurement software for a military medical center. Since neither of my immediate corporate nor military superiors really understand the GPL, they've all agreed to license the software under it; and from day-one, everything developed has been released under the GPL, with my name as the holder of the copyright. Now, this 'home grown' system is actually being looked at by the MEDCOM commanders to be deployed Army wide; and, there are some people in the chain of command, under the auspices that the Department of Defense owns the software and that THEY didn't agree to the licensing, don't want to adhere to it because they want to incorporate it's functionality into a closed, propietary system that they've been developing. If I've followed the appropriate steps for applying the GPL to the software, do I have any recourse if they try to close the source? Is this situation parallel to the ASPL or am I missing something?"
Why don't you ask the FSF since they wrote the license, about advice? WHy ask /. where the answer might or might not mean anything, and the value of the answer is questionable at best.
Je ne parle pas francais.
It's not clear. Copyright law has a big "gotcha" when contractors are involved. Without more info, I don't think the answer is clear.
The US Supreme Court gave a unanimous ruling interpreting "work for hire" in the case
COMMUNITY FOR CREATIVE NON-VIOLENCE v. REID, 490 U.S. 730 (1989)
The case discusses how to tell an employee from an independent contractor, and what standard to apply in each case to identify a work for hire. For an indendent contractor, the work for hire condition exists only "if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire." It also is only allowed for an enumerated class of works that doesn't appear to include computer programs.
In this case, Reid was a sculptor who made an oral agreement with CCNV to create a sculture for them. He did and they both tried to claim copyright on it. He was ruled an independent contractor and the contract did not create a work for hire because it was oral and because a sculpture isn't in the eligible class of works.
For this poster, it depends on what kind of employee he is. If he is an independent contractor, then he likely owns the copyright even without the agreement. If he is an employee, then he only owns the copyright if the agreement was in a written contract.
It sounds like things are even more complicated because he works for a contract agency. This presents a third possiblity. If he is an "employee" of the contracting firm, but there is no explicit written contract transfer of copyright from the contracting firm to the client as part of their contract, then the contracting firm would own the copyright.
However, a copyright licence like the GPL can be created much more easily than a transfer of copyright ownership. If the company agreed at any time to licence their copyright under the GPL, then that's probably definitive. The copyright owner can relicence the works they own, but they cannot revoke a licence already given, unless the licence specifically says so (and the GPL doesn't).