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Who Owns Source Code When a Company Folds?
pipeb0mb asks: "A few years ago, I worked for Chilliware, Inc. as the 'Technical Development Manager'. Some of you may remember us for the software iceSculptor, Mohawk and Mentor. Chilliware folded rather quickly and harshly back in May of 2001 due to money issues. Within days of the first layoff, everyone was gone, from the CEO and VP's to the receptionist. Now, years later, I've been digging through some old CDs, and am reminded that I still have the final production source code for the products we released in the retail channel. I've attempted to contact several folks over the past couple of years to gather information about the software and who owns it now. To no avail though. Either I get an 'I don't know' or 'No one' from the dis-interested parties. I feel like these programs are my children that never got a fair shot. I hate to see so much work wasted and lost to the ages. So, Slashdot: What do I do with this source code? It's a great deal of well commented and well written code, performed by over 100 developers in a former Soviet Republic (who formerly worked with Boomerang Software). Where do my binary children go now?" As things are now, if a company folds, the code is buried and forgotten unless someone buys the rights to it, before the source code is lost. This issue was discussed a long time ago and there didn't seem to be much in the way of answers. Have 3 years made any difference?
In short, contact a lawyer
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
... "ask a lawyer".
But failing that, try to find the principals of the company, the original owners. They owned the assets of the firm. If they don't want it try to get a "whatever, do what you want with it" from them before you try to sell or publish it.
The man who never alters his opinion is like the stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the Mind -- William Blake
I would imagine SCO have already registered a Copyright and will be contacting you shortly to save you from unwittingly using someone elses intellectual property. Either that or the creditors.
Check old news releases from competitors, etc.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
Be folded, and I guess sold its IP to Palm, but sold the source code to the yellowTAB guys, which was absolutely the right move. Palm is sitting on their hands (pardon the pun) about using any Be IP, but the yTAB guys are hard at work on the next version of BeOS, now called Zeta. Check it out.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
I do.
I will license it to you for 699 dollars.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Did someone purchase the assets of the company? If so obviously they own it...if it was a fire-sale type of thing and nothing really changed hands, I don't see how a non-existant owner could sue you for making it public-domain or even using it yourself.
Post it online, wait to get sued.
It's a great deal of well commented and well written code, performed by over 100 developers in a former Soviet Republic ...
Well, we all know that in Soviet Russia, source code owns YOU. So maybe you should ask IT.
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
IANAL
That really depends on the definition of "folds". Some examples from my
experience...
1. Company simply stops operating.
In that case the company itself may still exist (in fact if you go to
the web site of the Secretary of State for your state you may be able
to determine if the company is still "active" in which case someone's
filing simple forms on the company each year). In that case the
company (and by extension the shareholders) own the code.
In this case you might find that the owners, who probably have little
interest in the company, and acquire the rights for a small fee.
2. Company is bought outright by another company
This one's pretty simple, the new company probably bought all the
assets of the old company and that would include the copyright on the
source code.
3. Company's assets a bought but company remains alive
This can happen when a company gets into serious trouble, as happened
with many boom companies, and is effectively worth nothing because
there are no customers. The remaining assets (e.g. physical stuff
and copyrights) sometimes get acquired by another company for a small
fee. This happened to me, and in that case the new company acquired
the assets and got the source code.
4. Company goes bankrupt
If the company owes money to people then all its assets are going to
get valued, and that will include the source code, and who gets them
will probably be in the hands of a court. In this instance see what
happened in the bankruptcy clean up.
In the case of venture backed companies there might be specific
clauses in the investment that state what happens if the company goes
under and the VCs may end up with the code.
John.
performed by over 100 developers in a former Soviet Republic
In soviet russia.... software owns YOU!
The author of a Mac game called Glider worked for a company called Casady & Greene. He seems to believe that since the company went bankrupt, the rights have reverted back to him as the author.
I guess this would hold true so long as they didn't sell or assign the rights elsewhere.
Even then, regardless of the answer, you can still be taken to court and it will be up to a judge.
Flip a coin
heads = SCO
tails = Microsoft
I'd advise that you find out who was in charge of the liquidation of the company, and approach them. They would be in charge of the assets. See if they were sold on. If the liquidator still has possesion of them, offer a modest sum ($100 or something) to buy the rights to it off them. The liquidator will probably just pocket the money anyway.
If someone bought the rights when the company was liquidated, see if the liquidator will tell you who, and approach them.
-- There are three kinds of mathematicians: those who can add and those who can't.
"Where do my binary children go now?"
Either Binary District Elementary or Binary Memorial High School.
Oh man, any possibly useful answers to this interesting question are going to get buried by all the IANAL geeks willing to impart their pseudo-wisdom.
So how about this...if you ain't a lawyer or don't have accurate experience with the legal aspects of this sort of situation, post your IANAL comments under this thread!
When a company goes BK, the creditors own everything and either divide the spoils or it gets liquidated at auction. Most likely someone bought the rights to the software for pennies on the dollar. You will need to check the records at the federal or state BK court where the action was filed. Since there may be service fees involved to search online, you may have to visit the court and search yourself.
First I would consult a lawyer, but If i were you and I wrote the code, I would definately release it as open source. There isnt a company anymore to sue you for Intellectual property violation!
I'm not suggesting this is cost-effective, but maybe it would pay to consult with an intellectual property lawyer? It's a cop-out answer, I know. But assets are normally liquidated from dead companies by the last holder of the company. Maybe it's a trivial venture to purchase the rights (via a foundation, new or existing) to the now-deceased company from the former owners? Someone has to still be holding the bag... even a VC.
Amateurs discuss tactics. Professionals discuss logistics.
Who own de source code?
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
They didn't sell their code to YellowTab.
YT has a license to use the code until 2005 or something (and that doesn't seem to include the kernel as they havn't announced any of the bugfixes the BeOS community has been longing for).
Who owns the code when a company folds? Why SCO of course! Don't they own everything?
If you owned it and no one is after it, check with liquidators first, then release it as GPL. People might like it them. How was it licensed anyway? Seems Chilliware made some Apache confgurator thingie too - but I don't remember much about that either. They came and went way too fast.
All Ad hominem replies happily ignored as the sender shall be deemed to lack the faculties to comprehend the equation.
However, it the company tanked so badly that there WAS no bankruptcy / asset sell-off, then you may be in the clear.
The best thing to do would be to hire an actual attorney in your jurisdiction and go from there.
Of course, you could just start marketing the products as your own and see what happens. But then you would always be waiting for that certified letter in the mail hauling you into court to seize all of your assets. Hmmm... which way to go? ;^)
Cheers!
"The only good windmill is a tilted windmill."
Well, if a company seizes to exist, either due to bancrupcy, or it is just disolved, all assets are usually sold off. The source code was likely part of this. Now it may happen, that nobody bought it, and it got abandonded for anyone to pick up. But to make sure, you need to check with whoever took care of the company.
---- join dshield.org Distributed Intrusion Detec
Although you worked on it, you never owned the copyright. What makes you think you'd own it now, or that there isn't somebody out there with a legitimate claim to it? Use it at your own risk.
My advice? There's no way you can just release this without getting an OK (a legal OK) from whomever owns the copyright (this may be the company that auctioned the corp's assets for all you know). If you're the only known holder of this code, you're out of luck. You already posted to /. =) Otherwise you could have just released it to the wild without a peep using Kazaa or Freenet or something like that. Not ideal of course, but it would be better than having it sit on a CD for the next 20 years or whatever the IP laws dictate, and it would have been nearly impossible to trace it back to you, I think.
Tough situation, for sure.
Another advantage of GPL and similar licenses is that if a company gets [bored|bought|bankrupt] some other group can continue development. This is why we don't have a lot to worry about with Novell's Ximian aquisition. Even if they decide to stop development of XD2, Mono, Evolution etc, I'm sure some other people or company might want to continue doing so. Obviously this doesn't help much in your case, but it's worth thinking about for people developing new software.
If the company shut down in an orderly fashion, the owners/investors of the company own the assets.
If the company shuts down through bankruptcy or other processes such as an ABC where they have not been able to pay their creditors, the creditors own part or all of the assets. Most likely the assets were sold off if they had any value in this case.
That's your first task: find out how they shut down or if they are a going concern. If they shut down in an orderly fashion, they may still exist within the company shell.
So, I'd use the following technique:
1. Search for the company records in your state or local govs website to see who the owner is, or if it is shut down. Contact the owner.
2. If you believe it shut down owing creditors, contact a creditor (or two) to see if they know. They may have records since they may have had to approve any disposition of assets
I think it is really unlikely that "no one" owns the assets.
HE FUCKING FAILED IT!
Wait to see what happens to SCO and you'll know the answer.
there's no place like ~
I'll give you $10 for the rights to your soul, Heh Heh!
Disclaimer, this could be totally wrong but AFAIK:
If a company goes bankrupt then the liquidators that are called in would basically sell off all the companies assests in order to pay back anyone the company owes money too.
If the company went into volantary liquidation and there are no outstanding debts then anything left over is split between the shareholders. It depends if the code was actually accounted for as an asset whilst the company was being liquidated. If it was n't and you go on to make money off this code then you could end up being sued.
What do I do with this source code? It's a great deal of well commented and well written code
Well written AND well commented? Put it in a museum, dude!
in Ohio (answers may vary by state?). Company went into Chapter 11. Code to an enterprise workflow system was sold by the bancruptcy atty to the founder for $1,000. You need to get hold of the atty who is handling the bancruptcy and make them an offer.
Code is an interesting case when assets are sold. Normally, a physical object can only be sold once. But rights to code could potentially be sold many times. Selling it many times may diminsh the value to each buyer. If you wish to Open Source the code, this might exacerbate the value decline if there are other interested buyers so you will have to be careful about exactly what rights you will have. As always, consult an atty.
FreeSpeech.org
You owe $5.00 for every day you've had those CDs.
You are of course correct. Again, asking /. for legal advice isn't sound advice. However, I'll tell you what would happen, basically. If you tell that lawyer you have something from this company of value, it should technically belong to the company's creditors - I assume it went out of business for a reason, correct?
What will likely happen is that the lawyers for that company won't be interested in developing the software - but they'll be damned if they'll just give it to you and see you do something with it of value. Likely, they'll tell you to fork over the code and decide to archive it in case anyone wants to screw with it. No one likely will.
There are basically three options you have. The first two certainly involve getting a lawyer.
1. Buy it from them. Problem there is that they will not know how to attach a value on it, so they will pick an arbitrarily high one. Remember, if no deal is struck, they get it back once you admit to having it. They also don't want to get fired when they sell it to you for too little. Not reaching a deal won't get them fired, and burning the code is probably best for them.
2. License it from them. Give them some money up front and a cut of whatever you get. This will cut your upfront costs, but they will likely want a huge cut. However, they won't be as afraid, at least, since they get more money if you do. Nobody looks too bad.
3. Pretend you don't have it, and do a "dirty room" re-write of it. Effectively plagiarize it and assume that anyone else involved with it won't remember, won't notice, etc. Then, if you do anything of value with it, worst case scenario is they sue you, you settle, everyone's happy. Bet you wish you hadn't posted this now, huh?
The problem is that, as the article poster mentions, this is a software dead-end, and it's very hard to revive dead code. The current owners don't want to look like idiots when they get pennies for valuable code that they didn't correctly value. They'd rather bury it, which is your problem now.
Note that this is not to be construed as actual legal advice. You'd have to be an idiot to listen to me, particularly since option 3) is pretty illegal. ;)
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Mohawk is still available for sale here.
Maybe you could call them and find out who they buy it from.
To the 011, of course.
I hate to see so much work wasted and lost to the ages. So, Slashdot: What do I do with this source code?
The simplest solution is to just wait the 150 years, and the code will enter the public domain, for the enlightenment of everyone.
(Assuming, of course, that Congress doesn't issue another few extensions.. and that there is anything left to run the code on in 150 years.)
If you can find no evidence of the product for sale, I wonder if it is possible to make productive use of the code and how much time has to elapse before you claim ownership.
If your lawyer determines that adverse posesssion is not applicable, I wonder what other "abandoned property" laws might be useful.
The company I work for had a huge support contract with a software vendor. When that vendor closed down we were out the money for the rest of the year and were faced with either not having support, or paying another vendor (who had purchased the source) for the same support.
DeviantArt Page
NSFWHe didn't say it was Linux code.
Infuriate left and right
SCO OWNZ EVERYTHING LOLOLOLOL THE X-BOX CONTROLLER IS HUGE!!!!!
Seriously, this is becoming the "take my wife, please" of Slashdot. Or possibly Slashdot's own "It's a trap" a la SA. It's a dead horse. Stop flogging it.
-=-=-=-=-=
I'd rather be flamed than ignored.
All your binaries are belong to us.
i.e., ran out of money and the investors declined to send more. The IP, which included the code was owned proportionally by the investors. It was sold to another company whose business model was to buy IP and then license it out at a fraction of the cost the company sold the products for.
I don't have the name handy, but I wouldn't doubt if all Chiliware IP was owned by some other company. You need to contact a corporate executive, preferebly a legal counsel.
Let's say for argument's sake that the source code really and truly didn't get included in the liquidation, and wasn't included in some blanket "..and all other assets of value or works produced thereof.." statement.
Does ANYBODY own it at that point? Is it considered public domain? Can it be re-copyrighted?
I'd guess that most liquidations do include a statement like that above, just to prevent stuff from slipping through the cracks -- name all the nameable stuff, and then have a catch-all for everything else.
All assets including code belong to either the
company owner or the "Corporation" under
the Receivership. If the company was public, then a Bankruptcy proceeding will enumerate those assets, including code and the trustee then has the right to dispose of them how he sees fit in the best interest of the shareholders. If the company was private, who ever owned the company and their heirs owns it unless they sold the rights to someone else.
I worked for a company that went Chapter 11, they still owed me money and I had the trustee come after me because work I did had tangible (read salable) benefit to clients left out in the cold. So, I cut a deal with the trustee, got my back money and some cash for finishing some work and making modifications to stuff already done.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
BK's
But then again, IANAL.
Not sure if its the same in the US but in germany they distinguish between author of a software product (credit) and owner. Only the owner - most of the time the firm that payed your work - can decide what happens to the product - copying, modifying, etc.
I still have a couple of Chilliware promo t-shirts. Sorry to hear of the company failing. I was looking forward to seeing where the company would go. Too bad it didn't survive the dot.com crash. Good luck with your open source idea for the old code.
That's a good question. WHO will own Linux when SCO folds over the next year??
If it's from the Soviet Union, do whatever you want with it.
Sell it, give it away, start you own company..
Like no one there would care anyway, and there is no real government left and laws are no enforced anyway..
So, get rich or be a nice guy and a hero by giving it away.
Whatever you do, you have nothing to worry about..
Please.
On my last coding job in my contract it stated that, until the finished code is handed over to them, it was mine, mine, mine!
And rightly so since I'm the one that brought the idea for the project to the company.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Hey, I still got source coed from a defunct company..I wonder If I can make money from it?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Have someone in an Eastern Bloc country post the code, after some strategic bulk renames within the source files. Give the modules new names, change non-code related comments (e.g., author), and post away. If posted from a .RU server, and distributed via kazaa, who can trace it?
Are you this "Technical Development Manager"?
Interesting (one might say prescient) commentabout Chilliware from Bruce Perens in that discussion.
Cheers!
Dah. That was easy. Ask me another question.
The people who modded this down have no sense of humor.
+1, Informative
Excellent read! Thanks!
In Feb Wired magazine had an article, headlined Immortal Code, about how some software survives the implosions of its company. "The CEO goes to trial. The programmers hit the street. And yet sometimes a piece of code is so elegant, so evolved, that it outlasts everything else." The main example was the DragonSoft speech recognition code, but it also goes into "software repo men".
Please follow this up wth some attorney, then post tell us what you find out.
Really. That wouyld be a nice change of pace.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Well, from this line...
"Some of you may remember us for the software iceSculptor, Mohawk and Mentor."
I'd say Troy McClure owns it.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
I worked for a small software company (PDS Sports Judge) that went out of busines shortly after I started working there. I had asked the boss where the source code would go for the software, and he said that it would be sold off (by whom I don't know), along with all the other assets, so the backers were assured to get back some of their investment.
I worked for another company that was on the receiving end of such assets liquidation sales or auctions (some being done by the IRS) and would guess that source code could be tranfered from one company to another that way.
Just like the computers or chairs owned by the company, the copyright to the source code is a corporate asset. When the company was liquidated, it should have been listed as an asset as part of the bankruptacy (you didn't mention, did the company go through bankruptacy?).
It is likely that in the bankruptacy judgement, the title to this asset was specifically called out and turned over to the creditors (or it might have been done in general terms as "all other assets").
In any case, the creditors probably own it. That said, you might be one of the creditors, and might be able to get clear title to it. Or you might be able to get clear title with a promise of royalities to be paid to the creditors. Could eb some work, but you could free "your children".
The copyright will expire eventually.
Just wait 70 years after everyone dies and you're home free.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Years ago, I was Director of Technical Services (Software Development and Research & Development) for a small, high-tech company. I was also the tenth largest stockholders in the company when it went bankrupt.
My agreement with the company included my rights to keep a copy of any and all software I developed for the company and to use it as I wished.
In fact, some of the software came from a large engineering company where I had worked previously. In that case, I had asked for and been granted permission to keep and use a copy of a specific set of programs I had written.
At one bankruptcy hearing, I gave the secured creditor a good copy of all the software. He asked me where I got it and I told him I made him a copy from my copy.
The secured creditor went through the roof and started threatening me with lawsuits for "illegal conversion".
My lawyer said that I while I would probably prevail in court on the matter because of my agreement with the president of the company, it would cost me thousands to do so.
I'm pretty hard-headed. It didn't matter that the software had no commercial use except for a very narrow segment of companies (there were about three in the United States that did the same thing and they already had their own software), I refused to give it up and wasted a lot of money on lawyer fees to keep it. The bad thing is that my lawyer took it upon himself to start negotiating away my rights to keep the software without telling me.
So I fired the lawyer and kept the software.
Since neither of us really had a use for the software, he never did file suit against me and I still have a copy of the software.
All I need to use the software, besides a reason to use it, is a PDP-11 and a VAX.
If nobody owns the IP rights to something, that means it's in the public domain. So, if the people who should know are responding "no one" owns the rights, and they're right, then it's public domain and you're free to do what you want with it. That's doubtful to be correct.
IANAL, but my understanding of the matter is that the IP of a dead company depends on how the company died:
If the company ended in bankruptcy... then the creditors of the deceased company that got left holding the bag still have the IP in their bag. At that point, this IP is hostage, waiting for somebody to pay off the debts of the forgotten company. Usually, that's more than it costs to do without it.
If the company got bought out at the end... whoever did the buying likely got all the IP rights the former company had, so that's the chain you've got to follow.
If the company wound down operations orderly: Well, they either transfered the IP assets to someone/something, or they weren't as orderly as they thought when they wound down. The net result here seems to be a back door into the public domain, since the only entity that could defend the copyright has already killed itself.
So, anybody wanna pick what I just said apart now?
/. is not the place to go for legal advice. A lawyer is. If you listen to /. you're gonna be following the advice of people who are just talking out of their ass and get in trouble.
/.s:
I can see future Ask
I got charged with DUI. What do i do?
I got arrested for murder. How can i get off without having to pay for an expensive defense?
I plan to rob a bank. Any tips?
If the code was never sold, you may be able to pick up the "corporate shell" for a very reasonable price, and claim ownership.
I've heard of this happening on occasion for other reasons (e.g., somebody liked the company name and/or logo).
Why just get the source code, when you can get any proprietary fonts, logos, letterheads, and other junk as well.
Of course the shell might still have liabilities and other hassles, and of course... wait for it...
IANAL
Get a lawyer.
My crappy ISP hasn't routed worth a d*** lately. I'm not previewing this post.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Most real software companies but their code in escrow, since many big businesses require it. If the software company goes out of business, the code them goes to whoever is designated in the escrow agreement, usually the customers. The customers are give the code, but not the IP, for the purpose of maintaining the application themselves.
Working as a consultant, I've seen quite a few companies that are supporting an application using code aquired from escrow when the vendor folded.
Right, and then we'll all dance in fairy land and everyone will be happy. I mean seriously, there's no chance in hell that would happen. If the team ever did anything worth a damn with it then the lawyer might have his boss come in and say "Why the hell did you give this away, you are FIRED!"
I mean, that's just not the way this world works. I'm pretty sure parent is a troll (and a good one! ;>), but it does raise a good point, namely the following...
The only chance you would have of open-sourcing this would be for the guy to convince the company to donate it to FSF or some other non-profit. The FSF would then value the code at some ridiculous value, giving the owner a massive tax write-off that is much more valuable than it sitting around collecting dust, and more than the guy could have ever paid for it.
That's the only chance of open-sourcing this stuff.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
1. Find out which bankruptcy court the company filed in. 2. Go to http://pacer.psc.uscourts.gov/ 3. Get a pacer account. 4. Search the court filings for the party name. 5. Download the plan of reorganization or liquidation. If the filings aren't available electronically, contact the clerk of the court and request a copy. You can find the number for the clerk on the court's homepage. The bankruptcy plan lays out who owns what following reorganization or liquidation. Look for a clause regarding "intellectual property." Pacer will cost you $.07/page to view the docket - probably a couple of bucks. Ordering the filing from the court will cost you more - $.10/page or so for the copying, plus postage.
"It's a great deal of well commented and well written code, performed by over 100 developers in a former Soviet Republic"
in soviet russia the source code owns you!
If you just want to release it under some sort of free license, put it out there anonymously. If you want to profit off it, release it commercially and wait for the lawsuit. If it's a commercial success, settle out of court and get the company to hire you to continue work on the product. If it's not a commercial success, there aren't going to be any damages anyway. And remember, you can't be sued for punitive damages until the copyright on the software is registered. I assume the copyright for this software has never been registered. If it has, then there's the way you can find out who owns it.
on Monday October 23, @11:36AM
but what frikking year was the comment made?
There is far too much prsumption of knowledge in this forum.
Did you sign a document seeding the company IP rights. This is important because you have the rights to the software based on the fact that you never sold them to the company in exchange for employment. This is done on a per person basis.
If not, retreat to the fellow who outlined the several steps of discovery for who acquired the company's assets.
-------------------------
As easy as herding cats!
SCO DOES!
Why did I lurk so long before registering for a Slashdot account? I could have had a Slashdot ID of less than 100000.
What I want to know is, who gets to "own" the Aerons?
If you're feeling lucky, you could simply publish the source code. Assuming that there are no trade secret issues, putting it on your website for public comment might not involve any serious liability.
Two things (at least) could happen:
1) The real copyright holder might notice, and answer your questions.
2) Nobody might really care, in which case you could eventually do something more daring.
3) SCO might sue you for infringing their copyrights on Unix^H^H^H^Heverything.
Option (1) could involve a bit of embarrasment for you, but if you weren't distributing the code, or claiming the right to do so, I imagine that you' probably get away with it. Or not. Talk to your lawyer. Get someone in Nigeria to post it.
Option (2) isn't so good, either. Although you never get in trouble, you really can't distribute or license the code. MAybe you could start a project to reimplement the functionality?
Under option (3), at least you would get some serious publicity on Slashdot.
See what I've been reading.
As your attorney I must advise you that you'll need a very fast car with no top and after
that, the cocaine. And then the tape recorder, for special music, and some Acapulco shirts...
This blows my weekend, because naturally I'll have to go with you -- and we'll have to arm
ourselves.
Could you set up an open source project that qualified for tax deductible donations, and have them donate the code?
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
I've worked for several sucessful software companies. I just take their code, anonymize it by changing names, etc. then create a sf.net account through a variety of psuedonyms and publish it under the GPL.
Next fork it through freshmeat and a couple of public repositories...it's pretty hard to track.
OpenOffice? That was me. I took the source from an old release of Microsoft office and the rest is history.
Eclipse? Yep, me too. Started off as VCP++ 3.3
CVS? That was my first. I was paranoid, so I just started with the guts of an old version of Visual SourceSafe.
GNU C compiler? Funny story, it all started when Gates left an old eight inch floppy on his desk, hand-written label "Microsoft Basic 1.0".
Sorry, gotta go. The groupies are here so it's time to smoke a bag and play some old stones tunes before the orgy.
Who puts potholes in the road?
Who owns all the source code?
WE DO! WE DO!
Who put Microsoft on top?
Who gives the public code that's slop?
WE DO! WE DO!
Useless opinions, worthless observations, and more!
was GPL'd and transferred to the Kaffe project after Transvirtual folded. I wonder how they got the permission of the creditors? Perhaps you might ask someone on the Kaffe mailing list.
The owner of the company owns it. He hired you, and the others, to produce it. If the owner of the company cannot be determined or there are debtors they can claim an interest in the software. In short, not you. I would imagine if you express interest in releasing it they might be willing to restart the company or at minimum will want a significant portion of the revenues. It might be negotiable though. Ask them, all they can do is destroy your dreams with crass demands for money.
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
While Chilliware may have employed developers in the former Soviet Union, this press release states that it was a privately held corporation located in Los Angeles, California:
I doubt it was incorporated in the former Soviet Union. Probably Delaware or California.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
You should be able to locate whomever bought the assets of the company from the records of the Bankruptcy Court or from the Bankruptcy Trustee.
If you know what you are doing, use a court-document search program like PACER. http://pacer.psc.uscourts.gov/
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Corporations, like Chiliware Inc. are a fictitious entity. You probably signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement when you started there. If so, this probably included a clause stating that anything you developed while working there was property of the Corporation. If this is the case, the rights to that software went under when the Corporation did. You can try to fight for it, but it will probably be a useless battle.
hey, you guys, you know, the DOJ lawyers we talked to a while ago. Now would be a great time to pipe up and get some +5 Informative Karma.
-
Post it anonymously on SourceForge, then at least some people may look at it.
Oh well, what the hell...
what would Matlock do?
That's how I answer all questions in my life.
It helps to go into a drug induced haze beforehand.
Actually, there is some benefit to asking for this kind of advice - but not to determine the course of action. Rather, for getting an idea of what's possible before seeing your lawyer.
If I were to get divorced (I'm not even married), I'd be talking to my divorced friends to find out what I can expect on the legal front - not because they're legal experts, but because they have experience dealing with my situation. They might be able to help steer me away from bad advice, or help me know what questions I need to ask.
I definitely wouldn't "ask Slashdot" when I've been caught with 40g of cocaine and a 12 year old prostitute in my car. But it is perfectly germane and sensible to ask a bunch of coders about their experience and advice in a situation dealing with writing software and the legal ownership of that software.
for BSD nirvana you might want to walk to /usr/X11R6/bin/enlightenment
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Years ago, I was asked to maintain a piece of software where the author distributed the code, but maintained copyright
The author then died, with no heirs, but he had assigned the software (In code comments) to his employer. I called the employer, and asked. I was told, "Do what you want with it - it's yours". Unfortunately, I've never gotten a letter, so I have never really continued. If they want my changes, they can have them. Much better products have come along in the 7 or 8 years
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
you license SCO software, use Linux, or come withing 300 feet of either. In any other case, Microsoft owns it.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Sounds grim but true.
So I have to wonder,
Is it just that no one thinks their corporation will ever die? Are bankruptcy proceedings so sloppy that they leave any property unassigned?And, if there is no hope for this particular after the fact problem, or for corporations to put in general legal safeguards for tidy disposal of property without the need for expensive lawyers, then is there some small "sunset" clause that software developers could put in their code to ease the transfer, like a quit-claim that goes into effect if the corporation dissolves and no creditors assert any rights for a period of one year.
IANAL, but, now and then, they're indispensible.
[It's too bad the code author didn't have some claim on the company's assets, such as a paycheck that didn't come. I could see where he could submit a claim as a creditor and negotiate to settle for said source code.]
"Provided by the management for your protection."
This press release may give you a starting point and possible contact information:
Perpaps Ms. Dittoe or somebody else at Dittoe Public Relations can point you in the right direction.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
Ahh, chiliware. I remember them. I believe they had some Apache thingy. Anyway, here's how I see it. I did exactly this with some success. You take your old code and re-write it. Don't bother with lawyers, at least until you go public. Use what you think works in the code (you did write classes, right?) and then re-package it. The rights to the source you hold - in its current form - belong to the creditors of the company, IMO. However, you should feel free to manipulate it and come up with something unique or at least different enough to avoid any "headaches." Think of it this way - some geek card punched out some code in Fortran way back in the 50's. We've all been plagiarizing and deriving stuff from that ever since.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
Print out the source code; modify it line by line; set up a corporation in Nevada; claim your close relative wrote it all as an employee and then send it to the Copyright Office to copyright it. Check and see if your former company had filed for any patents on the original product. If not, file for patents. If the creditors won't transfer the rights to the sourcecode cheaply to you, just wait to see who they sell the products to and then inform them your Nevada corporation owns related patents. Or you could go the altruistic route and GPL your modified code and then in 15 years we could have a repeat over the SCO/Linux war... Perhaps your former company's management team were either enlightened (or stupid) and they didn't copyright/patent anything...you could be the next Lotus to their Visicalc... or MSDOS to C/PM... This is just idle speculation on my part and no way should it be construed as a viable business model I advocate, patent or not on the model... :)
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Ask the copyright office who owns it. If it's not registered there, no copyright can be enforced against you for anything you do until it gets registered. If no one else is in physical possession of the source but you, no one else is going to register it. Register it yourself and you might own it. There was once a software guy who got rich enough to run for President on money made from claiming ownership without a clear title. Run it up the flagpole and see who salutes. If you make enough money to be a famous billionaire, no one will sue you for what you steal, because you will have more money for lawyers than they do (cf __ and ___).
That's a one-way ticket to jail. If he has those disks unknowingly, it's a potential oversight. However, if he 1) finds them, and 2) contacts the rightful owner, he's obligated to return them immediately. I suspect they'll record the conversation, and no judge/jury on earth will go for the old "I lost them" routine. Well, maybe the OJ jury.
Remember, his copy is legal under fair use (backup copies made while employed)
The hell! He doesn't have a license to anything he used as an employee. When he quits (or is fired, or laid off) his rights to use company property ceases. I've seen the fair use law, and it ain't that. If MS fires me, can I do whatever I want with a Windows CVS, like develop it into another product? Uh, no. That isn't fair use.
and the only thing the owners can do is compel him to destroy it. They can't compel him to give the code back - he doesn't have a relationship with them anymore.
Legally they sure as hell can. He has their property. Period. They can't threaten to fire him, but he can go to jail.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
"Chilliware actually tries to make money from Linux applications. The company's model is similar to the one Corel used until recently. Chilliware is developing its own Linux distribution and selling closed-source applications for revenue generation. That model failed for Corel, but a slightly different approach from a more nimble competitor may yield different results...."
http://linuxtoday.com/developer/2001030601604OP
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
We developed lots of code, some of it quite good. When the company was finally shut down, one of the founders bid on the software assets at auction, got them for something like $1300, and GPLed it all. He's slowly getting it in shape to post to the net. Some of it was quite cool. (No doubt you'll hear about it in coming months, and fail to relate it to this posting.)
One good thing about the crash, though, is that a huge pile of really bad code washed away without doing anybody any harm. It gives me private pleasure to consider how large a fraction of that code was in Java.
Depends on how the board or CEO handled the situation. Technically it is the company's software. So who is the company? The board of directors, CEO, etc...
When the startup company I worked for folded to get some money hte board of directors sold the rights to the software.
If you take the code without securing some rights to it, and succeed in making money out of it somehow, you can be absolutely and positively sure that somebody else and their lawyer (or lawyers) will come out of the woodwork claiming that they own it, or you infringed their copyright or patent. The more money, or money making potential, others see in the code, the flimsier the ownership claims will be. Secure the rights to the code now before you invest any time or cash in it. It will be too late to do so after your success is written up in Slashdot and "Fortune".
In this post you [i.e., pipeb0mb (60758)] stated:
Perhaps the alleged victim of the "wandering eye and hands" wound up owning all of the IP (and other corporate assets) because of a sexual harrasment judgment or settlement? I'm not asserting anything; I have no idea what happened to the company. Just asking based on your prior comment.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
Find out who and how the company was shut down. If you can't find anyone who took control of the assets, send letters to the contact person on the corporate papers (you can look this up on the Web in most states). Give them 90 days to respond, and if they don't, indicate that you consider the code to be in the public domain, and that you will be building derivative works.
NOTE: I'm not a lawyer, but I bet some form of what I'm saying would ring true with a lawyer.
I worked for a Dot Com that folded. They sent the "assets", including $1.5M of Indian-outsourced code to a holding company that executed the shutdown of the company. The holding company then auctioned the code off to another software company for an insanely low price (something like $100K probably -- not that the market value of it exceeded $10K).
Now it sits on the shelf of another floundering software company, unsold and unused.
This comes up all the time, often when someone leaves property behind when they move. You'll need some simple legal advice, but there's a procedure, which involves a police report and the publication of some notices, and if nobody steps forward and claims it, it's yours.
But not in the US. Here (BR) every folding or closing company has its "successors", analogue to the inheritors of a physical person. The successors own the remaining assets and debts of the former company. This includes copyrights. So here, it's easy to trace the successors, and ask them to give you/sell you the copyrights. There is no "dangling" rights issue.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Trying to sell that source, or give it away, or market the binaries yourself, may put you in deep kimchee if whomever putatively owns the IP for that company ever finds out.
If on the other hand, that source eventually does find its way onto the net, and it can't be traced back to you, then chances are you can't be held liable. Especially if there are any differences between the released code and what you had, and they seem to be because it came from a different or earlier set. *wink nod say no more*
In cases like this? Will the code/IP go into public domain in this case?
1. Company is bankrupt and
2. Company no longer is listed as active and
3. No owner can be contacted.
What are the implications if you release such a code into the public domain? Will you get sued? How and by whom?
Well, they do, actually. There are preferred creditors, less preferred, and non-preferred. The first are banks, the last something like common-stockholders. There is a VERY well-defined pecking order - basically, the higher ups basically get what they want until the debts are satisfied, and if there's anything left, you go down the chart.
The problem here is this guy's code is like Grandma's shitty costume jewelry - it wasn't worth Grandma putting in the will, and before she died, no one really makes a fuss about it. They likely didn't even notice it when the family divvied up Grandma's grap when she died. But if anyone actually wears Grandma's shitty old necklace to a family reunion, say, then everyone's going to get all pissed asking you how come you got Grandma's necklace. Then, the oldest sister wants it an pulls rank, and a nasty fight ensues. Yay.
Same thing here. Everyone assumes that code is comepletely worthless, and doesn't even want it - that is, until you come along, mention that you have Grandma's necklace from the estate (ie, the source code from this project) that you weren't really entitled to. Now, everyone else ahead of you in the pecking order (ie, the preferred creditors) wants the code, simply because it now might have value. Remember, they don't care if they make money off of it - but if you do, that means they could have, and somebody's ass is grass.
And, if there is no hope for this particular after the fact problem, or for corporations to put in general legal safeguards for tidy disposal of property without the need for expensive lawyers, then is there some small "sunset" clause that software developers could put in their code to ease the transfer, like a quit-claim that goes into effect if the corporation dissolves and no creditors assert any rights for a period of one year.
I like that idea - problem is, I don't think it's enforceable unless it is agreed to (probably ahead of time) by every potential lienholder/creditor of the company, down to common stockholders. You could make it boilerplate. The problem is that creditors don't want to give things that might have value away, and would rather just have it "just in case." Most likely, they'll just assert their rights over all software in general, in case something comes up they didn't know about.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
It is presumed that the coded is gone. As in tossed in the trash, right. So do it.
Here. 33N 38' 8" by 117W 56' 28" in back, on friday 8th of August at 11:00 pm. in a brown paper bag...
Now you have tossed it in the trash. I'll come pick it up and do a back alley GPLing... All for only a pack of Camels and a Mt. Dew.
Contact me for details.
Well the first thing you do is not broadcast to the world that you have all this intellectual property.
:
...
If I had to guess, it goes something like this
1. Company goes belly up.
2. You find source code to a market ready product
3. DON'T BROADCAST TO THE WORLD VIA SLASHDOT THAT YOU HAVE IT.
4. Change it up a little, particularly change the name and some visual aspects of it.
5
6. Profit!
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
As others have pointed out, without such provisions, the ownership of the source code can become very mucky--generally any creditors have claim to the company's assets. You might be able to buy the rights to the code for pennies on the dollar, but then again, the code might disappear forever if the owner doesn't care or won't sell. The legal thing to do would be to look up the bankruptcy documents and find out exactly what happened to the company's assets & then try to work something out with them. Any other actions will depend on your feelings about the risks, punishments & likelihood of getting caught. The right thing and the legal thing aren't necessarly the same thing.
Vote Quimby.
Publish the code under your name and wait for someone to sue you. Then appologize and offer to buy the code from them. This is the easiest way to smoke the mysterious "them" out. If nobody sues you, it's yours....and remember, this is not official legal advice ;)
And see who sues you.
The code is dead... the company is dead... prolly wasn't that a good code nowadays (you now program much better... and would do it much diferently)...
.Net platform appeared... your skill improved over time...
;)
In the last 3 years, many things happened... Java evolved to a more rubust fase,
My suggestion:
do a list of the program ideas/specifications and redo it from that list... place the code in the trash can... it's dead code anyway...
But IANAL mind...
THe statement " If it's not registered there, no copyright can be enforced against you for anything you do until it gets registered." is completely false.
/kind/ of proof which will stand only if it does not face any convincing dis-proof.
The registration of (C) only helps you a bit in a court case, but it NOT necessary to prove or disprove (C). If one has proof that they own the (C) for the code then no registration is necessary. Alternately, registration is not proof either if of prior ownership can be produced.
Registration can be used as a
Did the company owe you or other co-workers back pay? Did they pay employment taxes?
Three years may have been too long to wait but you could sue the company and get a judgement (preferrably a default judgement) assigning ownership of the source code as compensation for your loss.
Of course, you'll need to employ a lawyer to do this.
-rick1. Offer goose for code and post notice in town square.
2. Wait 30 days
3. If no one claims the code in that time you may keep the code and eat the goose.
I was in a similar situation. when my company went BK, I was owed about $6,500 back pay. As a result I am a creditor in the "company" and I have a lien on any "property" that the company owned. Basically, the source code for the app that I developed got forgotten about. Anyway, since I have this lien on the "property" I can "confiscate" it and use it as my own until the someone who owns the code pays off my lien. Anyway, I still have my source code, although I've been unsuccessful in making any money on it. I hope this helps!
... that cannot be re-written if the need for it truly exists.
Using or releaseing the code yourself as others have said is extremely risky. Maybe you'll get away with it, maybe you'll be sued back into the womb. Flip a coin.
On the other hand, if you truly wrote the code and the code itself was not patented AND you didn't sign a non-competition pact with your employer... Then spend a couple years (or however long it takes) and rewrite it. Make it better than before, start a source forge project around the idea. Then it will be yours, no question.
But remember you got paid by someone else to do that work, it's theirs, not yours, even if currently you don't know who "they" are.
Do the right thing and rewrite it.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
I mean, who's kidding who here...
It's a great deal of well commented and well written code, performed by over 100 developers in a former Soviet Republic
There are 10 kinds of people in the world > > Those who understand binary and those who don't
So the question is: "did you sign a 'work for hire' document when you joined the company?"
Even if you did, if they shut down without paying you your last paycheck, you may have a case that the company failed to live up to their side of the contract - i.e. pay you for your labor.
1. Put the source on Kazaa.
2. Sue whoever downloads it.
3. ???
4. Profit!!!
As other posts have pointed out, someone always owns the remaining assets, including IP. Those UNIX IPs are going to be kicked around for sometime. (Baring some nice company releasing it under the GPL.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Not really - it has an intrinsic value that is independent of their actual cost. I've seen a lot of this lately, all involving nonprofits as recipients. MS donates copies of windows to schools, and typically deducts retail price. Another biggie is companies donating patents to universities. Typically the patents are things that didn't work out for them, and got shelved. They donate the stuff to the university in exchange for a "favorable" valuation of the donation, which is typically more than they could have ever sold the patent for.
So, from examples I have actually seen, there is frequently a disconnect between what a donation should be valued at and what's been happening. Supposedly the IRS is going to look more closely at this, but good luck there. This has been a nice loophole for a few years now, as everyone but the government wins. The nonprofit gets something that might be of some value for free, the company gets a big writeoff. The nonprofit doesn't pay taxes, so that's not a consideraton. Nice racket, eh? Some big companies have been doing this too - can't remember exactly, but Big Oil comes to mind, as does Dow Corning.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Many people (including me) always wonder why big corporations don't release source code for dead projects, even when the are OSS friendly. For instance, IBM and Smartsuite.
Well, one of the best answers to this is that many products include technology from multiple sources. A company would have a hard time releasing something as OSS without renegotiating licenses with their licensors.
It might be difficult or impossible to KNOW that the code was totally owned by Chilliware and they had the right to even distribute the full source code. Did the company buy all the software outright, or did they license modules for encryption or compression or whatever?
1. Offer goose for code and post notice in town square.
2. Wait 30 days
3. If no one claims the code in that time you may keep the code and eat the goose.
Linus should tell this to SCO. Tell them their goose was waiting for them in '93, and now he has rights to their SysV stuff.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
... for analysis, I will run my special software on it:
- the software will analyze the code for patterns already registered with our database for a match.
PS. We need the complete and original source code, any copies made will contribute to errors in matching...
It seems to me that your best bet might be to put a notice in the appropriate publication(s) announcing your intention to appropriate the code and ask whether anybody has a stronger claim to it than you. Then cross your fingers and hope that nobody takes the bait. That's essentially what the bank would do if it found a deposit box full of stuff and it couldn't determine the owner.
One question one might ask is whether your employers allowed you to take copies of (their) source code off site, and if so, why.
First, did the company close or go bankrupt?
:) Though I know thats not your purpose with the code.
you actually do own the CDs you have. its the copyright thats in question. I wonder if they sold the copyright is their someone out their with a copyright and no code!?
perhaps its YOU that stands to make a buck
Copyrights for Software Code are considered property and must be distributed if Chapter 11 occurs without a full asset purchase by another company.
The court appointed bankruptcy administrator will take "control" of the assest and do the best to ensure payment to the creditor (with certain classes of creditors taking what was owed them prior to others). Anyway, as this code is an asset it will be liquidated along with the other assets.
For example, the administrator may place the software rights up for auction and the highest bidder will take their rights. Or if a creditor has placed a lien on the registration rights, the rights may go to the creditor. However, one would likely argue that if the value of the registration exceeds the value of the debt for which the lien pertains, the rights should be sold and the creditor only takes the value of the debt.
So, even if SCO goes belly up, the registration rights (especially ones SO visible) will be still around.
Wouldn't surprise me if Solaia and/or the Niro firm bought the rights. See my journal entry of Tuesday July 22 if you want more detail on that.
Stop undressing me with your eyes. I'm ugly naked.
Just take the code, change it a bit, if anything ever happens later - just say you hired the 100 developers from the former Soviet Republic to write it, and that is what you got back - since they are not in the US, it's optimal to blame them.
Disclaimer: This can and should be considered as legal advice.
Oh, so to answer your specific question, find the bankruptcy ruling showing the disposal of the assets. It should be in the Federal Bankruptcy court where the bankruptcy was filed (normally where the action was filed). You'll be MUCH better off showing up (WELL BEFORE CLOSING TIME OR BEFORE LUNCH) and being really nice to the clerks. They typically are VERY helpful, unless you're an ass to them. Which why most clerks don't help attorneys.
Stop undressing me with your eyes. I'm ugly naked.
or something
The code ownz you!
Come on like you didn't that coming.
Here is my serious side. If you have called around and made an attempt and no one knows and says that no one owns it then I think your free to use it. Although if you do go far with the code and start making millions of dollars I think then you have someone claiming a stake in ownership. I know it would be pricey but I would hire a lawyer in this situation and have them hash out the details then at least you know that all would be safe at that point.
YASD - yet another stupid death.
that, or
YKYBPNHTMW - i'll let those thousands our there in the know chuckle about this one. once i found a bag of carrots in the supermarket and thought "hey! too bad i'm not blind right now!"
As you can read on their new web site, the founders struck a deal with the creditors to buy the software for 100,000 euros.
They reached the goal in about 4 weeks!!! As can be seen in their MoneyMeter report.
Now, what does it depend on? Well....
- What the legal form of the company was (i.e., corporation, partnership, etc.
- How it "went under" (i.e., voluntary dissolution, involuntary dissolution, bankruptcy, receivership, etc.)
- What rights the company had in the source code to begin with (i.e., was it created from scratch, derived from licensed code, created under licenses to patents that provided that ownership to "improvements or implementations" belonged to the licensor, "works for hire" under the Copyright Act (U.S.), etc.)
and the list goes on and on....Here's something NO ONE usually thinks about - if the company just folds (non-bankruptcy) and is a corporation, most states have strict provisions about what happens to assets and how they must be disposed of. However, I'll bet that if there is a corporation, there are stockholders who have rights in that code as a former corporate asset.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
AKA, they didn't have any.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
and it is this: It depends.
I can fantasize all sorts of facts completely consistent with your story that would result in dramatically different answers. It just depends.
It depends on who owned the assets before the financial worries (determining clearance and ownership of any work is not always a trivial matter; who wrote the code, were they contractors or consultants, if contractors, what do the work for hire agreements say, how about other ip, what was it derived from, any third party incorporated codes, etc).
It depends on the structure of the company. Corporation, partnership, llp.
It depends how it shut down. Was it liquidated, with assets distributed? Bankruptcy.
It depends upon the agreements of everybody who worked on the software, and whether there were provisions that dealt with whatever eventualities occurred.
It depends upon the nation and, sometimes, the state in which these events occurred.
It depends.
Only a lawyer can ask the questions, determine all the issues and answer them, if an answer is available.
Anybody who pretends otherwise is lying to you.
There was quite a bit of neat code and design in the company, representing years of some peoples' lives, all rotting on the shelf. My decision was to just walk away from it. If I ever want any of that code, I will us my experience to write it again, in less time, from scratch.
Trust me, if there are scumbags involved, you are better to cut all ties and starting a new life. The last thing I ever want is to have any future dealings with my old employer. If I cut a deal to use any company property, I just couldn't trust the other side to honour their end of the bargain (as they are without honour).
you mean "uninterested parties". Disinterested means that they do not hold a stake in the issue. Uninterested means that they do not care.
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
That doesn't usually determine who has the right to sell and distribute the code (usually that either gets owned by whoever buys the remains of the company or else gets sold along with the chairs and espresso machine or whatever), but it at least protects the customer against being dependent on abandonware, and the escrow agreements can clarify that the customer has access to it for N years under whatever conditions.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Chilliware folded rather quickly and harshly back in May of 2001 due to money issues.
(A opposed to due to origami?)
So, how's he going to get a coin?
/. is a great place to find peers in industry who might have already gone through this kind of thing. Don't listen to opinions, of course, but maybe they point you at a precedent, a law on the books, a well-publicized example in the past, etc. These are the things you should be researching on your own (because you're a nerd and you're smart and you're good at researching) before you go to a lawyer. Then go to the lawyer prepared. Otherwise, you're probably not getting full value because you won't be able to ask intelligent questions, what-if's, or you'll be paying the lawyer to re$earch well-known related facts or cases that you can find yourself. Then let the lawyer spend those billable hours on the even higher-value stuff that he/she's best at. My experience with IP lawyers is that they appreciate clients who do their own research first. Keep the lawyers on their toes and you'll benefit.
I do believe that's the first laundry list where the "# ..." could have been omitted and it would have been a sound (if illegal) plan.
So what did you do when you were found with 40g of cocaine and a 12 year old prostitue in your car? My uh friend is in a similiar situation.
Please send the CD's to my Post Office Box, or I will send sharks with lasers on their heads to get you.
e t
Google is fun for finding information about people.
like:
Scott McDaniel
Technical Development Manager
Chilliware, Inc.
www.Chilliware.net
s.mcdaniel@chilliware.n
phn:213.365.8700
icq:440404
no?
A quick google search turned up Icesoft who are selling a product called iceSculptor. Is it possible these guys bought the rights when the company folded?
If your company goes belly-up, and the PHB lets you go home with a company server, it's yours to keep. Regardless of how stupid the PHB feels afterwards. A gift is a gift.
So if the PHB lets you go home with all the code, maybe you could argue (*cough* make up *cough*) that it was a parting gift for years of service?
If you didn't start selling licenses to the code they probably wouldn't notice or care anyway, same as if you didn't turn around and sell the company server for $100k. Maybe release it as GPL? If no money is being made, the developers will probably agree with you that it was a good thing to do, while the management won't notice for years to come.
NOTE: I am most probably an idiot. Take my advice at less than face value. Do not listen to me for I Am Not A Lawyer. (iANAL being the complement of ANAL)
Can I start a company called WebVan today? Maybe. How about using WorldCom's logo for my new venture?
Bigger question: will anyone who can claim rights to those things pursue me if I use them for myself? Probably not -- unless I am successful. If I am successful that will get the attention of people who might have told me "who cares." If there is a legal heir, they will fight for the throne.
I've seen the legal agreements for software ownership at software companies -- there is always a clear deliniation of ownership rights for contingencies such as sale, merger, public offering or dissolution, etc., of the company.
In one recent agreement we had a partner who was responsible for writing and maintaining the bulk of the application system. We had contract language to the effect that if the company could not support the application or if the company folded we would obtain rights to the software. That's just an example.
Point is, there most likely is a legal owner and if you do something unauthorized, you'll be vulnerable to legal repercussions.
BTW: Don't mix that source code in any forum that could be seen by GNU or Open Source developers, or you'll taint the community.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
You call a priest, he will know.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Real$ is shaken last week, we are reforming our previdenciary (health care + pensioning) system, basically shafting the public employees (as is yours truly)...
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Damn Dittoe heads!
I'd bet there's a lot of people here that's happened to.
salvage (s?l?v?j)Pronunciation Key
n.
1.
a. The rescue of a ship, its crew, or its cargo from fire or
shipwreck.
b. The ship, crew, or cargo so rescued.
c. Compensation given to those who voluntarily aid in
such a rescue.
2.
a. The act of saving imperiled property from loss.
b. The property so saved.
3. Something saved from destruction or waste and put to
further use.
The concept of salvage is a long established part of
maritime law, because it was recognized that there
was no benefit to protecting ownership rights of
property that the rightful "owners" could not secure.
Allowing somebody else to rescue the property would
be a benefit to society as a whole that outweighed the
theoretical loss to the "rightful" property owner.
Some definition of "abandoned" software really needs
to be developed. The only thing that is different about
this type of "shipwreck" is that the losses are less
visible.
Creditors should have first claim, but when they have
no capacity or desire to do anything with the code
then there really should be a mechanism to allow
it to fall into the public domain.
Why don't you hunt down the real owners of the software and offer them a deal along these lines:
a) I will ressurect the code, update it, and attempt to commercialize it -- AT NO COST TO YOU.
b) In return, I will give you a percentage of any money we make with the new product. (i.e. FREE MONEY)
I think the lawyers would smell a potential profit and say go ahead. A little profit is better than dead code sitting in a file cabinet somewhere.
Many companies, including where I work have the source code put into an escrow account, and if the company folds we will have access to the code. And the code is not released to anyone but other customers who have also paid for this right. So there are other issues besides the lawyers - its the lawyers and the lawyers of customers
What is true in the US may not be true where you are living. (Yet)
s.
So what did you do when you were found with 40g of cocaine and a 12 year old prostitue in your car?
:(
No, Slashdot won't be any help. Go after the expert, Homer Simpson, for a flawless defense:
Just say, "I thought the cop was a prostitute," and you are free to go! Judges are very understanding about these things, at least Judge Judy seems okay.
Geez, I just realized my whole education was provided by FOX
Vote in November. You won't regret it.
As others have pointed out, the code is essentially dead. It's not yours; it has no value; but if you try to use it or buy it, you'll possibly be in big legal trouble. Anyone who's been in the business more than a few years has seen this many times (often when the company is still in business, but simply cancelled the product).
So... treat it as practice. I'd imagine the products weren't perfect, and now you know what could be done better. Re-implement the code, either keeping it proprietary as your own, or making it open-source if you'd like to get free help.
yeah, I just checked the link and I'm intrested. Just need to find a place...
What I heard from a guy at Iomega is they have an in-house proprietary version control system called Slime, that they very carefully guard as they believe it is one of the secrets to their success.
A solution to the problem with music today
First off, this answer applies in Canada. I am a Canadian lawyer and quite confident about my advice in this country. My familiarity with American law is necessarily less thorough, but I do know the US Bankruptcy code reasonably well.
Ok. "My company folded". What is THAT supposed to mean? Was there a bankruptcy order made? That makes all the difference in the world.
If so - the source code vested in the Trustee in Bankruptcy. His task was to sell it on behalf of the creditors and remit to the court.
VERY often however, this does not come to pass.
So what happens?
Here is your answer:
When a Trustee in Bankruptcy does not sell an asset, the asset remains vested in the Trustee. By default, under Canadian Bankruptcy law, property that is not disposed of by the Trustee is supposed to be returned to the bankrupt prior to the Trustee being discharged.
In practice, this hardly ever happens in a corporate bankruptcy. Trustees don't do anything they aren't paid to do and if no one is watching about i dotting and t crossing, nothing gets done.
In Canada, the post bankruptcy corporation is neither alive nor dead. It can be revived by the shareholders but this is highly unusual and typically this is never done. A post bankrupt corporation is a lurking mess and the responsibilities for tax filings and potential director's liability issues is hardly ever worth it.
As there is no one left around to pay the corporate fees for the corporation, it is dissolved by order of the Director of the Business Corporation statute in its jurisdiction and it becomes essentially dead. (But if someone were to acquire the shares from the former shareholder and file articles of revival, THEN persuade the Trustee (who is almost always discharged by now) to go back on as Trustee and THEN make the necessary motion to the Registrar to return the property to the bankrupt, you could then
have the corporation AND the rights to the code.
But - not so fast. That is assuming there was a deal in place for the corporation to actually own the code. Sometimes there is not and the bankruptcy itself reverted ownership in the code to someone else because of a defaulted royalty.
In other words - it's a complex answer which is highly dependent on the facts.
Under Canadian law at least - one thing is NOT true - the property does not vest in a creditor be it secured or unsecured. It is highly unusual for a creditor to foreclose and this is almost never done. The property does not belong to the creditor - the right to sell it for FMV and keep the proceeds is what the creditors - both secured and unsecured - had.
(While I won't vouch for this analysis under US Bankruptcy law as 100% correct - it is MOSTLY correct I expect).
So - is this lurking code something you can manage to make your own? Yes. With the fees to a lawyer and the Trustee, it's possible. The problem is, questions of this kind alert people to residual value in an undisposed property. People who are otherwise unaware of value will be alerted by your inquiries and requests.
Which is a nice way of saying that sometimes it's best to shut your mouth and make some quiet and discrete inquiries.
If the worst case scenario is there is some Trustee theoretically who did not dispose of a copyright it should have, and it would at law have reverted to a dead corporation, then it isn't very likely that anybody would have any right to assert that - say - code you claimed was yours was NOT yours.
Get the picture?
YMMV
.Robert
I remember you guys from LinuxWorld 2001 in NYC. Still have your t-shirts. You had a drawing for a car at your booth. 4WD or something I think. You never announced the winner and I remember emailing and asking about it and never got a reply.
So was that a crock???
According to Darl McBride, CEO of the SCO Group, it is a "derivative work" of the Unixwarp OS/2 source code, and therefore the intellectual property of the SCO Group, the collection of lawyers who feast on the corpses of software companies.
No. Not a crock. A guy from San Francisco who worked at Sharper Image won it. I wish I had his name for you, but I don't. :(
How do you know Chilliware no longer exists? Most "failed" corporations stick around for years. They often have to by law, to provide a period for lawsuits and such.
e ry CorpNumber=C2194403
Chilliware, Inc. was incorporated in Delaware, like a great many corporations. See the following:
http://kepler.ss.ca.gov/corpdata/ShowAllList?Qu
In California, it was only a "foreign" corporation registration. On Delaware's Secretary of State site:
http://www.state.de.us/corp/index.htm
it states that Delaware *charges* to look up corporation information. So, you must pay $30 for a written certificate, $10 to talk to somebody, or visit 401 Federal Street in Dover, Delaware to search for free.
So spend the $10 and find out what actually happened to the company.
Larry
It doesn't matter if the company has gone belly up, the intellectual property (copyright) in the source code is owned by the person who created the code, not the company.
The original idea behind copyright in subject matter known as "works" (I'm in Australia, I know that this is the law in Australia and the UK, not too sure about the US, but should be similar) was that they are the creation of human intellect and thus the copyright which subsists in the work must be owned by a human, not a company.
The company can own copyright in subject matter know as "subject matter other than works" which can include the mode of production which can allow the company to bring an action against people to directly copy a CD on which a program is distributed but they can not do anything directly to anyone who copies source code because they do not OWN the source code.
As long as you are the programmer to produced the source code, you have every right to use it and distribute the programs which come from the source code. If you are not the sole owner of the copyright, you need the consent of the co-owners of the copyright and any profits which come from the use of the source code should be shared between the co-owners.
What do the source files actually say? Is there a copyright message in them?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
He sounds like he has a drive to succeed...maybe you should contact him.
...they might have issue with you releasing it into the wild (amazon listing). I'm sure the software is still being sold elsewhere too. As everyone else has said, perhaps legal advice is in order. Maybe you can pick up the IP, get some VC, and soon you'll be TCB!
Not a lawyer. Now then...
When there is no clear market price for what you are donating, then original cost, or if ascertainable, replacement cost, would be strong guide in determining the value of the goods provided. Depreciated original cost (whatever the book value would have been) might also be a good starting estimate.
Donating is sometimes a great idea. The problem is that since the company went out of business, it's almost certain they lost money, thus they have no taxes to offset. If was a C corp, then unless that business revives itself without a change of control within the statutory period for reclaiming tax losses, the "losses" will never offset any taxes inside the corp.
It would be very interesting to hear someone who knows says who "owns" the code if the corporation was formally wound-up without some of the intangible assets having been sold. Theoretically the liquidators should have gotten some value for it. It may have even been sold to the law firm or other insider for $0.01.
I would suggest taking the "I'm poor but would like to work on this / see the code live" approach. That will lead well into either the "why doesn't the current holder give it away to something like the FSF and take the deduction" or the "what's the lowest price I can pay for it" discussion or the licensing/royalty discussion, which also sounds like a good idea.
--
Send out an anonymous chain letter to a bunch of random programmers. Say they must send it to 7 other programmers or be eaten by the Taco Bell chihuahua.
Or just put it on Kazaa.
she told me she was 18, it was totally consensual, and she told me she had to get this powdered sugar to her grandma pronto or the cake would be ruined!
What about the following as a response to OAACPLA:
KAPLA - a Klingon Attacked my Provider of Legal Advice
Appropriate context:
Slashbot 1: How do I GPL my file sharing application in such a way that the RIAA and SCO won't sue me?
Slashbot 2: OAACPLA
Slashbot 1: KAPLA
Slashbot 2: At least he died like a warrior... with honor! To Sto-vo-kor!
Slashbot 1: Ummm.... great... now what do I do about this application?
"I definitely wouldn't "ask Slashdot" when I've been caught with 40g of cocaine and a 12 year old prostitute in my car."
Sounds like a good ask Slashdot to me. I want the rest of these details. Depending on who you were caught by I'd recommend offering them a line and a turn.
"I definitely wouldn't "ask Slashdot" when I've been caught with 40g of cocaine and a 12 year old prostitute in my car."
When or if? Is there something we should know?
copy the code and accidently leave it behind an the next local Linux User Group meeting. Shortly after that it might a anonymously posted to a newsgroup and from that poing, the creditors have to work really hard to protect their intellectual property and you are free to work on it in the meantime.
Accidents happen.
Contribute o the open source project, maybe the people that spends their years working there get their name in the history book of open source.
Found this
And this containing contact info (may be out of date)
If Amazon still sells this then someone is connected to the money and that means trouble... So forget droping it in the trash and I don't know you...
I haven't seen his particular contract, but I actually doubt that pretty much. I haven't seen any company involved in the production of software that didn't forbid taking home copies of the code, or at least demand the destruction of same upon quitting. Also, chances are he made this copy with company resources, as people typically don't do builds with their own equipment. Though naturally he would have to substantiate. Bottom line, I would bet that copy legally belongs to them. If he made this copy in his capacity as an employee, it belongs to them and is not a personal copy. Technically, he probably has stolen property.
Question - Do I have a right to demand that the University hand over their copy of my work because I have lost my original? Answer - Hell no. They may not have permission to use it beyond the library, but that copy is theirs, fair and square, and they don't have to give it back.
That's different. You provided them with a copy as a condition of you graduating, and you would have signed some mumbo jumbo granting them certain rights, yada yada. However, again, I would be willing to bet that he did not have the right to possess that IP, making him different from the library you mention. At a minimum, I would imagine that he would have been obligated (as an employee) not to have removed said copy in the first place.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
the ownership to corporate assets is given first to creditors, then preferred stock holders, then to common share holders. If you are in possesion of company property at time of company closure, you
are asking a legal question. U don't own said property.
http://www.westga.edu/~chodges/pdf/24FM10.pdf
.... if we fold.. all of our clients are guaranteed that if we fold they get the source code, so that they can continue to use it, improve it, etc. It is part of the deal. Also the clients can buy the source code to our product if they want, but good luck compiling it, there are over 3000 generated files, 200 scripts and over 2000 none generated files, plus mscellaneous stuff. I can do though, so I'm one of about 3 people.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
when the schools IT manager is irresponsible, he only knows M$ trash and leaves work early every day
/. ;)
a responsible school IT manager uses linux at LEAST at home and reads
IANAL, but as I understand it a company can exist as a legal entity (party to contracts, etc) long after it ceases to exist as a functioning business.
Whoever owns the pile of papers that represents the entity that is your former company could easily have a problem with what you are doing.
Check EDGAR and other SEC sources (if a public company) for current contacts. I would assume a lawyer would be required to tell you when you have tried "hard enough" to contact any interested parties.
Premature optimization is the root of all evil
You are holding onto a headache of liability. Your life will be so much simpler if it just disappears.
On the bright side, I bet your NDA expired by now. There are some internet sites out there that have preservation as you describe in mind, and do things like keep source code to games from companies out of business. You could ask them for input.
Hey, I have the complete source code for HASP, the Houston Automatic Spooling Processor. It controlled card reading and printing for IBM System/360 mainframes. It's all in well-written but sparsely-commented Assembler, some of which I myself wrote. All on a little gray 9-track distribution tape that I'm sure I can get copied back to punch cards.
What's my legal situation here?
Whenever the company's creditors figure it out, any open source project with the slightest bit of code is wearing a big fat sign that says "Sue Me!" For a non-existant company with no revenue, the potential pay-off from a suit could quickly cause them to re-appear from nowhere. No honest coder could touch the stuff, leaving the code to closed-source projects. They'd likely be fly-by-night companies that wouldn't maintain it properly anyway, not exactly the kind of adoptive parents you'd hope for.
As long as someone retains a lawyer, it doesn't much matter if they have the law on their side. It's called a civil suit, where the actual argument can take place. Look at SCO -- it can make a huge and destructive problem without any legal case at all.
No matter what everyone in this discussion says about "what rights you do and don't have", employee-rights contracts are meaningless when one party is defunct. All that's left are potential rights-holders. But who are they? Who could sue you? You don't even know unless you publish the code, release the product as shareware, and publicize the situation. You've started down the right path!
You have the right to bring this up. You have the right to try to keep anything in your possesion, and it's very hard for someone to get it from you, without a lot of expense. You have the right to put the code up on a webpage if you like. Someone may ask you to take it down. If you don't, they may sue you. But they will not be able to punish you, if you think you are in the right, unless you piss off the grand jury, and the judges, and the jury, and public opinion. Not likely! And it's not likely to even come to this!
Companies go defunct all the time. Their patents expire. Their blueprints become unimportant. Their software loses value. Their manuals become useless artifacts. Their trademarks expire. The corporation is gone. No one is responsible for it any longer. Its creditors have already settled, by default or explicitly. Armchair inheritors of non-patent intellectual property have very weak cases. They can very rarely cause an injunction.
Publish the code. Make it shareware. See if anyone pays attention. You did your "due diligence", even announcing it on slashdot. Take a risk.
I'd just like to point out that if this code was developed in a former Soviet satellite, and they weren't completely paid for their work, then they could have a lien against the code itself.
In that case, you could possibly find them, get *them* to claim ownership, handle the American end of the lawsuit to get the code declared theirs, and from there get it back into working order.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
I am not a lawyer, am I completly off base here?
Little Brother, watching the watchers
The source code is owned by the same people who owned the computers, laptops, and any other assets of the company. Most likely, that is not you. If those people decided not to do anything with the source code, that was their right: they can waste their money any way they like. Or maybe it's not wasted: if they own another company with a competing product, the last thing they will want is for this thing to get out. So, no, you don't own the code and there is nothing you can do with it or about it unless you can establish who does and get their permission.
There is a bill floating around Congress that would require copyright holders to pay a tiny ($1) fee every few years to maintain copyright protection for their works precisely to get creative works out of this sort of limbo. But even then, you might still be contractually bound not to disclose the software.
If this matters to you, you could try to make it part of your employment contract next time that under a well-defined set of circumstances (bankruptcy, five years elapsed without a product), your copyright reverts to you or the software may get published. In fact, customers might like such clauses as well (source escrow). But most companies won't go for it.
NT
Ups... wrong discussion board... sorry...
It's possible one of the creditors snapped it up during the fire sales held by the court after the company folded.
That's what happened to the code for a company I worked for. This big company no one's heard of was going to invest, reneged, we folded, and they swooped in. Instead of a license, they got it all, and on the cheap, too. However, they are doing NOTHING with it, which is sad as end users would like to Open Source it or at least support some company to bring it back to life.
I'd recommend contacting the former company's CFO if you can. They are usually in the loop on what happened to a company's assets.
You're going to need a lawyer most likely if you manage to find out who owns it, but you probably don't need a lawyer to find the owner.
The highest bidder on Ebay ?
After that come the bond holders and after that the shareholders. Mind you, Venture capitalists can be quite aggressive about recovering assets.
See my journal, I write things there
Dump the code in international waters, then claim salvage rights!
Another angle worth checking into is to see whether the company had an software escrow agreement. Probably the easiest thing to do is mail the various companies that provide escrow services (search for software escrow on google) and ask them. Escrow allows customers of a software company access to the source code if the company goes belly up. What they're allowed to do with the source depends upon the wording of the escrow agreement.
if the company was liquidated, all of the assets of the company become property of the liquidators. generally you will find that liquidators know nothing about source code and will generally flog it off pretty cheap.
if the company was not properly closed and everyone just stopped working, then ownership of the code would be up to the courts to decide. so if you picked up the code and released it as open source or something, you could find one of the ex-directors or somebody sueing you.
there is also the escrow angle - which i believe makes the code freely available to existing (at the time) clients. what the ramifications of this for further development it, i cannot tell you. maybe google around for definintions of escrow and see what you make of it.
Simple issue. You dont own the rights even if you do have the source. What you have is a copy of the final code and nothing more. The orginal code was transfered to legal owners at some point in time.
I guess a point can be made to the owners of the code that opening it up is a win for them. It would keep the code alive. If forking is not allowed (i.e. changes have to fold back into the main tree) that could be a big win for the owners... they get free maintenance and extensions in trade for a free use license. But they keep ownership on the code, at least the original code.
If nothing happens the code is thoroughly bitrotted in 1 or 2 years.
This point applies in all cases - whether the ownership is spread around or highly concentrated.
Thomas
In the UK, I have gone through this a number of times, and I certainly know that in the UK, and in most european countries, the Bankruptcy agent / Reciever / Liquidator owns all rights to intellectual Property, and has the right to sell it on to interested parties.
The reasoning behind this is that this is where the value in a company is, and when the company goes bust, it is generally due to owing money and investors pulling plug. These investors become the majority creditors (after the tax man and payroll), and any value left is up to the reciever appointed to sell on for as much as is possible to pay off some of the debts that are left by the company (minus the recievers fees).
You might be able to work with the recievers even this long after the company folding, and see if they are interested in using your consulting services to help produce value in the bankrupt company, and then there may be a future for your software if the recievers can employ you to manage the software to sell on the remains of the bankrupt company to another software company that would want to take the product on..
Cheers
TD
Get a P.O. box and start a compagny in one of those country that doesn't care about copyrights laws and Voila. You may even get a trip there and release the code from an internet cafe. If anyone asked, you were hired as a developper for the compagny since you had previous experience in that type of software and you never realized that the familiarity of the code was due to plagiarism. :-)
BTW, I didn't read all the threads so I don't know if it's been said, but what does the software do?
1) Hire a lawyer
2) Have Lawyer find what other lawyer is handling ex-company's debt.
3) DO NOT TELL THEM YOU HAVE CODE!
4) Offer nicely to purchase all IP rights in ProductX for say, 100$
5) Now as the official owner of product X, release it under the GPL.
rinse, repeat
I assume there was SOME crediter some where.
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
I guarantee you - nude beaches in brazil won't be much of a draw if your average slashdot reader starts moving down there! :)
As you may recall, the blender community appealed to the larger open source community for help, and within months had raised the funds necessary to free the code.
Unfortunately, it is much too late for this to occur in your situation. It is very unfortunate that the management in your company didn't consider doing something like this before they closed the doors.
Those who trade freedom for security will lose both, and deserve neither" -- Ben Franklin
Blender
Those who trade freedom for security will lose both, and deserve neither" -- Ben Franklin
Technically its the preferred creditors of the company at the time that it folded. When you went under, an insolvency practitioner should have been hired to carve up the wreckage. You should anonymously approach them.
They will try to work out how to best extract cash from the code and then (after expenses of course) distribute the cash amongst the creditors.
It gets kinda complicated right there. If there are lots of creditors then the value will go on legal fees (sending letters etc). It will be a waste of time.
Often the main preferred creditor is the main investor.
If there is one big creditor, they will assert their ownership of it. It will then be sold, inserted into another of their portfolio companies, or mothballed (ie forgotten). None of these outcomes involve GPL-ing the thing.
Corporate insolvency and venture captialism are murky worlds at best and unfortunately the legal process means that I think you will be lucky if you get to do anything constructive with the code.
There is hope. I recall NaN (Blender) went under and the "community" raised a couple of hundred thousand dollars to "take ownership of" (ie GPL) it.
You should decide how much work you are willing to put in. The money men will have you running round, making all the calls, advertising, going to meetings etc. It will be good business experience for you but it will take a bit of effort and you may not like the results.
Kudos for trying though.
I wish at was Friday, but I dont want to wish my life away. So I wish it was last Friday.
Because a "company folds" does not mean that the assets of the company are up for grabs. Someone still holds the copyrights, and patents, etc. Even in a bankruptcy, someone holds the rights to the remaining assets. Assets are sold off, and some may not. Sometimes, you can pick up some cheap patents and copyrights and win big in the lawsuit game.
...not Websters.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
well, just a thought, chances are significant that there is likely some code in any given project that is actually or obviously derivative of code that was gpl'd. if you can show that, then you can argue that the whole of the code should be gpl'd much easier. if you had that evidence in hand when you go to the lawyers, you will probably be in a much better bargaining position than you would be taking in code that clearly fits a more commercially oriented license.
If the letters L, l, U, u, N, n, I, i, X, x are contained in the source code, it must be a derivative of SCO's work and therefore belongs to SCO. Please purchase a license and send SCO as much money as you can. Please also purchase SCO's stock as we are trying to pump it up so our directors can sell our shares. We also have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale. :)
1) The company probably either archived the code, sold it, or ignored it during the assets liquidation. Therefore, all you have is a _copy_ of the code. Sit on the copy until the copyright expires.
2) You are now in possession of _public_domain_ code -- and you are probably the _only_ person holding such code.
3) Make a _legal_ derived product from the public domain code and register the copyright to _your_ work.
4) Burn the original copy.
5) ??????
6) Profit!
--
Send us your Linux Sysadmin article.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
A post titled what happens now? about a pot bust.
But generally don't the creditors sign over their rights to any potential future claims in exchange for recievers paying them off so many cents in a dollar from the liquidated assets.
Mind you there's always creditors at the end of the list, useally the smaller ones, who don't get anything because nothing's left by then (meaning they never signed away their rights to claim any potential undiscovered assets). These are the small creditors like local tradesmen & stationary suppliers etc that did small jobs on account (like fixing a blocked toilet at the back of the office building).
IE some plumber owns your source code
If no creditor makes any claim for it, the liquidator of the company can sell it (or revoke the copyright of the code, not sure of this though) or grant a license to anyone who wud want to use it with/without a payment. Since in your case there is none to contact, you need to contact the Official Liquidator of the Company and not the counsel or any official of the Co. Also find out from the registrar office if the code has been licensed to any outside company and the number of years of such license.
In any case the only person you will need to contact is the Official Liquidator of the company who will be the sole representative of a wound up company. He can sue and be sued in his capacity as the Liquidator. So contact him and get your info. A dead companys assets are not public property and you will still be subjected to all the restrictions and legalities as would apply to an existing company!!! --- A student of Law from India...
If I find property that someone else owns & then promply loses it, there's absolutely nothing the original owner can do, because he's not out of pockert. Remember he lost the property in the 1st place.
Scenario:-
MS Dickhead leaves briefcase on train that contains the source code for Windows XPSE2+++, some junkie rifles through briefcase looking for some scoring money, he throws the briefcase out of the window & it lands on the scrub by the side of the track. Now it's 3AM & the pub's closing & I'm pissed as nute, I take a shortcut across the railway track to get to the nightclub on the other side, & I find this briefcase. They won't let me into the nightclub because I'm pissed as a mute so I go home. The next day I rifle through the briefcase & realise what I find. I ring up MS dickhead who's number's on the side & ask for a reward. He says 'can't do that, I'll get into trouble', I say 'well bugger you I'm going to hand it to the cops'.
Now if I happen to leave the briefcase on a bus while on the way to the copshop, have I committed a crime? What if I stop off at the pub for a beer & leave it there? Of course not.
Mind you the smart thing to do would be to remove any ID from the briefcase & hand it in at some police station in some suburb on the otherside of town, or catch a train right into town & leave it at a big inner city police station. Then when filling out the form I'll say I found it by the railway track but can't think where as I was pissed as a mute.
Odds on the briefcase would be filed away for the prerequesit 2 months, meaning I can go down & legally claim the briefcase & its contents as my own. BTW I rang him from a pay phone too, so there's no record of me contacting the MS dickhead either.
First you UI it. Then you have to make a FTGA to the local legal adminestrator. Once this is approved, you open up a GATAG and wait for anyone dispute this (Very unlikely). Then you go to the trustee in charge of the bankruptcy and make your claim, file a PTAE and you are now the rightful owner of the code.
Have a lawyer check with the bankruptcy court. Typically (at least in the USA) this stuff takes forever. A software company without big assets isn't a high priority, so it drags on, and judges know there are all sorts of ways to make money with software and other IP.
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I have seen former employees go to a judge and get a license to the source for little or no money up front, so long as they have a plan the judge believes may produce income. Of course this plan includes paying a license fee to the court to help pay off the company debts.
Be aware that you will probably be asked to turn over your copies, esp. if the court can't find copies. If nothing else, though, they may be willing to let you hold on to the main copies so long as you convince the court you will act responsibly.
IANAL,, and I don't play one on
How do you know Chilliware no longer exists? Most "failed" corporations stick around for years. They often have to by law, to provide a period for lawsuits and such. Chilliware, Inc. was incorporated in Delaware, like a great many corporations. See the following: http://kepler.ss.ca.gov/corpdata/ShowAllList?Query CorpNumber=C2194403
In California, it was only a "foreign" corporation registration, and shows the jurisdiction as Delaware. On Delaware's Secretary of State site:
http://www.state.de.us/corp/index.htm
it states that Delaware *charges* to look up corporation information. So, you must pay $30 for a written certificate, $10 to talk to somebody, or visit 401 Federal Street in Dover, Delaware to search for free.
So spend the $10 and find out what actually happened to the company. The records will show who to contact if it does, and likely who to contact if it was dissolved.
Larry
> "I definitely wouldn't "ask Slashdot" when I've been caught with 40g of cocaine and a 12 year old prostitute in my car."
:-/
> When or if? Is there something we should know?
Did you miss that discussion on Slashdot? Dude, it was the best topic of the dot-bomb era. Unfortunately, the successful answer (``offer everyone involved stock in the IPO") isn't very useful anymore."
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
Technology has no intrinsic value. The code you have is technology. It appears at present time to be worthless.
The question is are you an innovator and entrepreneur?
If the answer is "yes" and more important, "I AM able to make things happen", then you will turn the technology into something of value, but the value will come from your efforts and not from the technology.
Your profit from the venture will come from convincing the one who legally owns the technology that the deal you offer them is the best one they can expect, ie., the owners ability to innovate will result in less profit than you offer for the technology.
If you aren't motivated by the profit to make it happen, then the profit requires too high an opportunity cost to you to bother with, or you lack the required skills and commitment to actually innovate.
It's this simple: company goes belly up, all its assets are sold. That means their sources. Someone owns it, and unless you have a receipt, it isn't you.
code should be in escrow at the lawyers office for the firm. Sale contracts state in the event of the firms failure, the code is delivered to the clients. clients may use it for internal use only, not distribute it, but may modify the code for their own use. This is how big software (finance, hr, etc) is sold. As for your average dot-bomb company...
Ask a lawyer about found property laws in your state.
If you wait long enough (75 years?), it'll be public domain.
I would think that when the company failed, all its assets including the software you have in your hot little hand was sold to someone.
You might this interesting, http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/507.html.