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Insuring Contributed Code is Legal?
WanderingGhost asks: "Suppose you start a free software project and have people from all over the world wanting to contribute (hey, that's good eh?) How can you tell if they actually have the right to contribute at all? Contributors may live in different countries and work for different companies, and that means different laws and different contractual agreements. Aside from asking the person (I've found that this doesn't always work), what else would you do? Is there some place where you can find all information about IP laws of different countries (for example Japan, India, China, Russia) just so you can tell what would be the 'default holder of copyright' if a work contract says nothing about IP rights?"
I think you mean ENsuring.
This grammatic lesson brought to you by the letter, "e".
Anyone?
I mean, you can get insurance for just about anything. I assume that goes for contributed code...
Before allowing commit access to your repository, or accepting patches from someone, have them submit a signed affidavit specifically stating that they will not contribute any code they do not have the rights to. This is likely to result in less developers offering to contribute though as many folks can't be bothered to go through the hassle. Solves both your problems the way I see it (too many developers and legal liabilities.)
IANAL, but I did sleep in my own bed last night. (Tis a joke and a serious statement in one.)
Is it really your legal responsibility to vet all your contributors?
The only thing you know for sure is that you never know anything for sure.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
You don't.
That's why you insure, to rest assured that if sued good legal defense is ensured.
Now, can anyone come up with a good haiku for this?
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Scroll to A Brief History of Windows NT/2000/XP by Andrew Tanenbaum. This is a problem regardless of software license. The unique problem that open source faces is that people do it as well as working at the same time.
If it's a small project I wouldn't worry too much in any case. Otherwise, make the programmers agree to some statement before you'll accept their work (it could be an "informal" email). And always remember that estoppel is your best friend.
IANAL, but my key fear with using any copyrighted material is authors being able to revoke a license. Copyright and licensing laws are quite strong after all.
Go ask a solicitor. If you can't pay for one, then put a disclaimer "I assume all your contributed code is legal blah-blah".
insuring your project against copyright lawsuit might "ensure" you get to keep contributed code..
well.. it was just a thought..
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Personally, I don't really check. If the contributor says they've written it themselves then I believe it. If you can't trust the people you work with your project is doomed anyway.
:)
Also, if you don't write code to something controversial (think encryption and similar technologies) then you won't get into problems so fast. And if some of the code would be copyrighted, then all they have to do is prove it and I'll remove it
Insure legal code
Lawyers battle like thunder
Assured rest ensured
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Isn't this one of the reasons why the FSF requires all contributors to assign their copyrights to the FSF explicitly? I believe this puts the responsibility onto the authors, and not the FSF, to make sure they have the right to contribute.
More info here.
Isn't 100% foolproof. Go slpunk about in the 2.0.36 kernel and you 'll see where one submission took FreeBSD, removed the FreeBSD copyright notice and bragged about it.
RedHat 6 used the BSD lp code and didn't fufill the 'advertising clause' (same with Microsoft and NT)
And somewhere on slashdot you can find out all about the ATA code issue.
You are just going to have to keep detailed records of who submitted what, and have 'em agree to a contract to sign over the code AND agree that it wasn't code taken from somewhere else.
There are companies that offer a service to scan code for known open source code so that propietary code doesn't get caught by GPL and other license issues. But you can't scan the other way around since propietary code is not always published.
The only thing you can do is verify the real identity of the contributers so they can be prosecuted if they do something bad and hope that serves as a deterrent.
This problem isn't exactly original with software. Plagiarism has affected publishing almost from the beginning. Stealing credit for other people's ideas is nothing new. The proto geek who invented fire probably had credit for it stolen from him by some hairy neanderthal type.
For a large global company to shutdown OSS projects they don't like.
1. Find a contributor list for the project.
2. Match the contributor list against company employee list
???
3. Profit
[Even if they signed no IP agreement. Claim conceptual similarly b/w their contribution and the work they did for hire.]
No one will help anyways unless it's a huge successful project, at which time you can have the foundation explore all that.
"He was a wise man who invented beer." - Plato
"Is there some place where you can find all information about IP laws of different countries (for example Japan, India, China, Russia) just so you can tell what would be the 'default holder of copyright' if a work contract says nothing about IP rights?"
/., of course.
You go to
I'm in my last few days of law school, but IANAL, so this is not legal advice. However, I wrote a paper last year on what happens when the contract regarding an IP project is silent regarding the final holder of the IP (US specific). If you are an employee of the recipient of the IP, then you are not the IP holder, your employer is. When you're the independent contractor, then things get tricky. Depending on the amount of control the contractee has over your work (e.g. it tells you what to do more like an employer than a client who approves the final product), then at best you have the copyright, but the contractee has a non-exclusive license to do what it likes with the product. In 77 suits on the subject, an independent contractor tried to protect its IP rights and lost in all but a handful of cases owing to the non-exclusive license (which is governed by state contract law not IP law as Congress has excluded non-exclusive licenses by negative inference). The only trend I saw was that the larger the market capitalization of the infringing defendant, the greater likelihood that the court would find for the defendant.
The worst case was an architectural firm who drew up plans for a shopping mall development with intent to be the sole-source provider of architectural services. The plans were never on file with the city, but the plans were approved and the developer sold the project to another company. The other company hired its own architectural firm to redo the plans. The other firm erased all references to the original firm, made a few changes, and then submitted the plans as its own. Naturally, the first company sued, and the 9th Circuit said "you lose." The copyright was non-exclusively licensed to the original company through complete silence of the original contract, and so that license was transferred to the other company and finally to the other firm. The implication was that the architectural firm "intended" the other, competing firm to profit from its work---which is nonsense as no firm would want a competitor to turn its product into its own and profit without any compensation or acknowledgment.
Always, always, always get it in writing. Silence can be deadly.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
If it compiles, it's legal.
You cannot avoid, nor if the project is proprietary. I think you can only sue them, by means of a contract or some type of disclaiming.
Were this post a piece of code, it should be in the daily wtf for so many reasons. Seriously, do you even *care* about how patents/IP/contracts affect OSS? Why, because OSS is not affected by such in any significant way. Proven offending code was added to an OSS project, it would be straight out removed. It can range from an annoyance to a broken project in the short term, because of the loss of functionality, but in the mid term that resumes to nothing, as the blank left by the offending code is filled in by new code. And that's it. Nothing to see here, move along and just don't worry about it unless you have to.
I've seen a lot of "common usage" and "evolution of the language" bullcrap about errors like this, and they don't make sense. If the use of a word is stupid and doesn't make sense, then maybe it should be changed, but we have a clear distinction between the two words "insure" and "ensure".
I'm sure glad we've got people like you around to tell us what's-what. Guys like you don't need books to tell you what's correct. Guy's like you just go by what their gut tells them.
That doesn't give you an excuse to declare that they are the same in meaning. Any dictionary that tells you differently is wrong.
Exactly. The problem is these people looked it up in a book. Did you know there's more nerve endings in your gut than there are in your head? Yah, people have told me they looked it up and found out it's not true. That's because they looked it up in a book. Next time look it up in your gut.
AccountKiller
Stanford Intellectual Property Exchange (IPX) A team of leading intellectual property lawyers and computer scientists seek to create and deploy an online intellectual property exchange (IPX), with robust commercial and non-commercial functionalities, which is equally accessible to individual content creators, large media companies, consumers, and others. The system will massively reduce legal transaction costs for intellectual property exchanges. It will obviate, or eliminate the need for live legal consultation for platform-based transactions. IPX is a literal "marketplace of ideas," and their myriad instantiations...............@ CodeX: Stanford Center for Computers and Law: http://www.law.stanford.edu/program/centers/codex/ #projects .................We need hackers...............
It kinda blew my mind but this firm sells insurance policies to cover the cost of both offensive and defensive IP litigation.
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