Open-Source Copyright Conflict Heats Up (eWeek) [LWN.net]

Media Coverage Makes Mountain of Molehill

Posted Sep 25, 2004 0:36 UTC (Sat) by chohman (guest, #5519) [Link]

It is a very great pity that this story continues to get increasing coverage. My admittedly limited understanding of the sutuation is this: Furthermore contracted a programmer to add a feature to Mambo, an Open Source project, and thus hardly the property of Furthermore. The feature in question is not patented, and is certainly no longer a trade secret if it ever was. At best, Furthermore has a copyright claim on the IMPLEMENTATION of the featue. The code author claims that this is about 9 lines of code, obvious to anyone who knows how to code - this does not sound too copyrightable to me.
The question then becomes what exactly Furthermore thinks it owns, and how they think that an end user is liable for any purported infringement or "theft". If they have a contract case against the author, that is of no concern to any 3rd parties.
Of course, simply sending a page of legalese to people will produce the chilling effect that Furthermore is no doubt after. Sigh.
I.A.N.A.L., if that matters.

There might be a tricky legal case here

Posted Sep 26, 2004 5:55 UTC (Sun) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

To know the answer, we would need to see the contract terms between the company and the consultant. Depending on the language used, maybe the suing company has a case, or maybe it doesn't. Without knowing, we can't say one way or the other. If the consultant had no right to contribute the code, a court might force the project to take it out, and assess damages against the contributor. But a court might also decide that the consultant did have the right to contribute the code. Who knows?

GCC developers have used temporary nondisclosures frequently: a developer may contract with a microprocessor developer to do a GCC port, but not make the code available to the public until the processor ships. The GPL does not prevent someone from signing a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) limiting the developer's right to distribute code; it does prevent that developer from trying to keep secrets by distributing only a binary. There are some tricky questions raised by this practice, but the FSF has not objected as long as any NDAs signed have a time limit (though RMS himself would never sign an NDA).

There might be a tricky legal case here

Posted Sep 28, 2004 13:52 UTC (Tue) by chohman (guest, #5519) [Link]

My point is, nothing gives Furthermore any cause of action against Mambo users. They did not sign a contract, and thus can hardly be bound by its terms. Having a breach of contract claim against the contractor gives them NO legal traction against users, so why do we start hearing about cease and desist letters al la SCO? The code in question may ultimately get removed, but there is no widespread liability here that I can see.
It also occurs to me that if Furthermore needs to distribute their code as part of their business model, they likely must GPL it as a derived work, anyway (after all, they didn't write most of it).
Cheers.

Open-Source Copyright Conflict Heats Up (eWeek)

Posted Sep 27, 2004 14:42 UTC (Mon) by huffd (guest, #10382) [Link]

If you think about it, 9 lines of code being transferred between programming groups is like hearing a new catch phrase on TV and repeating it the next opportunity you get. Even if you change the inflection people will generally think they know where you got it.

Of course making a big stink about it will get you a lot of attention without the threat of being counter-sued from Australia. But threatning users of an application over 9 lines of code is a whole different matter.

I went to school a long time ago and I used to ask my teachers and parents why some students would be bad just so they got beat or paddled, the answer was always the same, because they needed attention no matter what form it took.

I think this has gone past standing on principle toward the shadowy end of getting attention.