Actually, what matters is whether or not he distributed the software, preferably under a GPL license, before he was employed. If not, then there's simply no record that he ever did any work before he went to work for them. Whereas if he had distributed it them he could go to that other person and get a copy of the software from them.
I've heard solid arguments in both directions as to whether internal corporate use counts as distribution,
By whom? The only time I've ever heard anyone suggest that internal corporate use counts as distribution was by the MySQL morons as an attempt to scare up business. The FSF even came out against them saying they were wrong and their arguments were damaging to the community.
1. Alice starts a GPL project. 2. Bob hires Alice to write an extension to the GPL project. 3. During her employ (or before, it doesn't matter) Alice uses some GPL libraries written by Claire. 4. Alice leaves Bob's employ.
FACT 1: Bob owns all the changes Alice made while in his employ. FACT 2: Alice had no right to distribute changes owned by Bob. FACT 3: Bob is not obligated to distribute the changes. FACT 4: As the GPL only relates to distribution, not use, Bob is free to use the software. FACT 5: If Bob later distributes the changes without placing those changes under the GPL, both Alice and Claire can sue him.
No. If I hire someone to extend the linux kernel (or something else that is GPL licensed), I own those changes. If I choose to distribute them, I'm required to distribute them under the GPL, but I am not obligated to distribute them and my employees have no right to distribute them. To put it simply: the code aint under the GPL until the copyright owner says it is. The copyright owner can even choose to distribute it under some other more restrictive license.. it would be a copyright violation, and third parties could possibly sue me, but that's my choice. Nothing is "automatically" GPL.
Gah. Every time this kind of story gets posted to Slashdot we go through the same conversations.
You entered into the employment and provided them with the code base, they most likely have a claim to it.
All the work you did for them is work-for-hire, they own it.
There's nothing wrong with using GPL libraries for internal proprietary software.. the GPL is a *distribution* license, you haven't said anything about distribution so I'm assuming they're not distributing it, in which case the GPL is irrelevant.
There's lots and lots of source code in the world, plenty of it is free for you to hack on, move on.
Cynical much? Obviously you don't have a loved one who makes you to sit through the ads cause they like 'em. Not everyone sees online ads as useless or disruptive.
Siiiigghhh.. fish farming.. you know, as opposed to getting in your boat and going out to fish in the ocean then being surprised when one day there's no fish?
This is stuff that people figured out thousands of years ago. It's the basis of civilization.
We're supposed to feel sorry for people who haven't even caught up with animal domestication?
Hey random environmentalist wackjobs with mod points... Neither 80 nor "about 80" is how much more "powerful" methane is as a greenhouse gas compared to carbon dioxide. I really don't think it is trolling to ask "mr mischief" to provide a citation.
No.... my point was that you had to search. The guy I was replying to said it with authority without even bothering to provide a reference. Now you've gone and provided him with one and I bet he still hasn't learnt the lesson. Thanks asshat.
And, btw, please provide a reference for the "by about 80 times" claim. Accuracy, it's not too much to ask.
ya know, I hear this all the time but no-one ever provides a citation. Do you have a citation? (don't go look one up, you said it with such authority, you should have one already).
That was before the global warming hysteria started. Now any discussion of peak oil is irrelevant unless it is being used as justification for switching to more environmentally friendly power sources (or as just a reason why we should all go live in trees). There was a time when peak oil was an economic argument, but now it is firmly a doom-and-gloom, we're-killing-the-earth argument.
Slashdot users have really gotten more stupid... think for a second.
WoW has no piracy (no, fucking private servers don't count you assholes). What if they were to turn off the serial number checking for a year? How rampant would the piracy get in that year?
Because that isnt how they see it, duh! And it's not even how the law sees it. It's a private transaction between me and the previous owner, if he makes a copy before selling (or giving, which is just selling for $0) it to me then that's not my problem. So if you want to make it a legal issue you need to look at the unauthorized copying by the seller (or gifter) and once you start doing that you're immediately going to run into the second hand market. Think about it, if the law prohibited second hand sales, that would be unjust - wait a minute, we're talking about iPhone apps right? The law *does* prohibit second hand sales. See how quickly moral arguments about copyright get silly?
Copyright isn't a moral issue, it's a legal one, and the proponents of copyright are all people with vested interests who take no care not to overstep the social contract, is it any wonder the public has no respect for them?
Make your 40 hour long game if you must... but break them up into 8 episodes of 5 hours each. Make each one "self contained" as much as is practical, even if that means you need to put a "previously.." at the beginning of eps 2 to 8.
And, here's the brilliant part: Charge $15 per episode. Many customers will bork at buying a $120 game, but plenty will happily do that over weeks/months.
sharks == stuff that offends people. Apparently Australia is a land of people who are easily offended.. if you know anything about Australians, you may find that a little hard to believe, but that's the basis of our censorship laws. So stopping people from being exposed to stuff they find offensive is the goal, and stopping people who are deliberately trying to get around the filter makes no sense at all - they clearly are not going to be offended by what they find after they get around the filter.
I for one am against any sort of filter because it is necessarily a regulation on ISPs and I prefer the government stay out of my private business transactions. However, I can imagine some people would like a filter and the best way to supply that filter may well be to do it at the ISP level. A government "mandated" filter should be a mandate on ISPs, not on end users. If I want to opt out, it should be as simple as calling my ISP and saying "I don't want that", or better yet, a web interface to turn it off.
Consider an analogy. Here in Australia we have beaches, and people go to swim in them. They even take their kids to swim in them. Long ago it was decided that putting up nets to stop sharks from eating the little kiddies was a good idea. The adults didn't mind either. For a while there was even a mandate that all beaches have shark nets. Eventually this was determined to be too much work, so the shark nets are only available on some beaches and they're clearly marked as such. There's no law against going swimming on a beach that doesn't have a shark net, and there's no law against swimming out past the shark net.
How can we implement a shark net for the Internet that is cheap and effective for people who want it? That's incredibly easy. For a start, you can blacklist via host name.. just distribute a list of "shark" hostnames to everyone who runs a DNS. You can even mandate that any DNS which is run for the benefit of the public have the list installed, but allow ISPs to run a DNS which is not filtered for those who don't want it. If you really want the list to be secret (and there's arguments on both sides for why it should or shouldn't be secret) then the government should run the filtered DNS servers. Depending on load, there could even by just one filtered DNS server, and all the ISP-level DNS servers would be for local host resolution, and they just set their upstream resolver to the government's servers.
If that sounds complicated to you, don't worry, it's not. This is so simple to set up that I expect it was originally suggested as the way to go and refused... because governments can never do anything simple.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, what matters is whether or not he distributed the software, preferably under a GPL license, before he was employed. If not, then there's simply no record that he ever did any work before he went to work for them. Whereas if he had distributed it them he could go to that other person and get a copy of the software from them.
I've heard solid arguments in both directions as to whether internal corporate use counts as distribution,
By whom? The only time I've ever heard anyone suggest that internal corporate use counts as distribution was by the MySQL morons as an attempt to scare up business. The FSF even came out against them saying they were wrong and their arguments were damaging to the community.
No. You're on crack. Employees don't need to be "licensed" to develop code for me.
He doesn't need to change the license.
1. Alice starts a GPL project.
2. Bob hires Alice to write an extension to the GPL project.
3. During her employ (or before, it doesn't matter) Alice uses some GPL libraries written by Claire.
4. Alice leaves Bob's employ.
FACT 1: Bob owns all the changes Alice made while in his employ.
FACT 2: Alice had no right to distribute changes owned by Bob.
FACT 3: Bob is not obligated to distribute the changes.
FACT 4: As the GPL only relates to distribution, not use, Bob is free to use the software.
FACT 5: If Bob later distributes the changes without placing those changes under the GPL, both Alice and Claire can sue him.
Nothing "automatically" becomes GPL software.
No. If I hire someone to extend the linux kernel (or something else that is GPL licensed), I own those changes. If I choose to distribute them, I'm required to distribute them under the GPL, but I am not obligated to distribute them and my employees have no right to distribute them. To put it simply: the code aint under the GPL until the copyright owner says it is. The copyright owner can even choose to distribute it under some other more restrictive license.. it would be a copyright violation, and third parties could possibly sue me, but that's my choice. Nothing is "automatically" GPL.
Gah. Every time this kind of story gets posted to Slashdot we go through the same conversations.
You entered into the employment and provided them with the code base, they most likely have a claim to it.
All the work you did for them is work-for-hire, they own it.
There's nothing wrong with using GPL libraries for internal proprietary software.. the GPL is a *distribution* license, you haven't said anything about distribution so I'm assuming they're not distributing it, in which case the GPL is irrelevant.
There's lots and lots of source code in the world, plenty of it is free for you to hack on, move on.
Cynical much? Obviously you don't have a loved one who makes you to sit through the ads cause they like 'em. Not everyone sees online ads as useless or disruptive.
Ya know, it sounds like you just made an economic argument without a single number.
Maybe I'm just being picky.
Siiiigghhh.. fish farming.. you know, as opposed to getting in your boat and going out to fish in the ocean then being surprised when one day there's no fish?
This is stuff that people figured out thousands of years ago. It's the basis of civilization.
We're supposed to feel sorry for people who haven't even caught up with animal domestication?
Hey random environmentalist wackjobs with mod points... Neither 80 nor "about 80" is how much more "powerful" methane is as a greenhouse gas compared to carbon dioxide. I really don't think it is trolling to ask "mr mischief" to provide a citation.
No.... my point was that you had to search. The guy I was replying to said it with authority without even bothering to provide a reference. Now you've gone and provided him with one and I bet he still hasn't learnt the lesson. Thanks asshat.
And, btw, please provide a reference for the "by about 80 times" claim. Accuracy, it's not too much to ask.
Fishermen are throwback hunter/gathers. Farming.. heard of it?
ya know, I hear this all the time but no-one ever provides a citation. Do you have a citation? (don't go look one up, you said it with such authority, you should have one already).
That was before the global warming hysteria started. Now any discussion of peak oil is irrelevant unless it is being used as justification for switching to more environmentally friendly power sources (or as just a reason why we should all go live in trees). There was a time when peak oil was an economic argument, but now it is firmly a doom-and-gloom, we're-killing-the-earth argument.
Slashdot users have really gotten more stupid... think for a second.
WoW has no piracy (no, fucking private servers don't count you assholes). What if they were to turn off the serial number checking for a year? How rampant would the piracy get in that year?
Or, like ridding a badger to the state fair..
(idiot)
That's like saying people who go to burger king instead of mcdonalds are somehow "pirates".
I could imagine a few ways... WoW has zero piracy for example...
Because that isnt how they see it, duh! And it's not even how the law sees it. It's a private transaction between me and the previous owner, if he makes a copy before selling (or giving, which is just selling for $0) it to me then that's not my problem. So if you want to make it a legal issue you need to look at the unauthorized copying by the seller (or gifter) and once you start doing that you're immediately going to run into the second hand market. Think about it, if the law prohibited second hand sales, that would be unjust - wait a minute, we're talking about iPhone apps right? The law *does* prohibit second hand sales. See how quickly moral arguments about copyright get silly?
Copyright isn't a moral issue, it's a legal one, and the proponents of copyright are all people with vested interests who take no care not to overstep the social contract, is it any wonder the public has no respect for them?
Yeah, release the episodes all at the same time. People can't gouge themselves if you ration them.
Make your 40 hour long game if you must... but break them up into 8 episodes of 5 hours each. Make each one "self contained" as much as is practical, even if that means you need to put a "previously.." at the beginning of eps 2 to 8.
And, here's the brilliant part: Charge $15 per episode. Many customers will bork at buying a $120 game, but plenty will happily do that over weeks/months.
Do what works.
Don't get caught.
Except that on iPhone, iPad, etc there is no choice. Apple prohibits any product which competes with their own.
sharks == stuff that offends people. Apparently Australia is a land of people who are easily offended.. if you know anything about Australians, you may find that a little hard to believe, but that's the basis of our censorship laws. So stopping people from being exposed to stuff they find offensive is the goal, and stopping people who are deliberately trying to get around the filter makes no sense at all - they clearly are not going to be offended by what they find after they get around the filter.
I for one am against any sort of filter because it is necessarily a regulation on ISPs and I prefer the government stay out of my private business transactions. However, I can imagine some people would like a filter and the best way to supply that filter may well be to do it at the ISP level. A government "mandated" filter should be a mandate on ISPs, not on end users. If I want to opt out, it should be as simple as calling my ISP and saying "I don't want that", or better yet, a web interface to turn it off.
Consider an analogy. Here in Australia we have beaches, and people go to swim in them. They even take their kids to swim in them. Long ago it was decided that putting up nets to stop sharks from eating the little kiddies was a good idea. The adults didn't mind either. For a while there was even a mandate that all beaches have shark nets. Eventually this was determined to be too much work, so the shark nets are only available on some beaches and they're clearly marked as such. There's no law against going swimming on a beach that doesn't have a shark net, and there's no law against swimming out past the shark net.
How can we implement a shark net for the Internet that is cheap and effective for people who want it? That's incredibly easy. For a start, you can blacklist via host name.. just distribute a list of "shark" hostnames to everyone who runs a DNS. You can even mandate that any DNS which is run for the benefit of the public have the list installed, but allow ISPs to run a DNS which is not filtered for those who don't want it. If you really want the list to be secret (and there's arguments on both sides for why it should or shouldn't be secret) then the government should run the filtered DNS servers. Depending on load, there could even by just one filtered DNS server, and all the ISP-level DNS servers would be for local host resolution, and they just set their upstream resolver to the government's servers.
If that sounds complicated to you, don't worry, it's not. This is so simple to set up that I expect it was originally suggested as the way to go and refused... because governments can never do anything simple.