Bruce Perens and the OSI board [LWN.net]

Bruce Perens and the OSI board

Posted Mar 25, 2008 0:14 UTC (Tue) by sergey (subscriber, #31763)
In reply to: Bruce Perens and the OSI board by elanthis
Parent article: Bruce Perens and the OSI board

First of all, IANAL, but I try to follow legal matters to the best of my ability.

If these individuals were employed by a company that operates in the same industry (software,
in this case), which Microsoft does, surely they must be required to get permission from their
employer to contribute to FOSS. So, did you ask for, and receive, proof of such permission?

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Bruce Perens and the OSI board

Posted Mar 25, 2008 16:00 UTC (Tue) by mpgoodwin (subscriber, #33555) [Link]

I know that MS employees are requested not to dapple in Free Software, because management does
not want to run the risk of "They have taken this GPL stuff and added it to that MS product -
now it has to be open source". Of course they cannot prevent employees from participating, but
I am sure that public participation would be frowned upon.

Martin

Microsoft employee contributions to free software

Posted Mar 28, 2008 23:15 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

That sounds like the opposite of the "permission to dabble in Free Software" that we usually talk about. You're saying MS employees are asked not to use or look at free software, to ensure they don't steal (i.e. cause MS to steal) someone else's copyright material.

I can believe that, but this thread is about contributing to free software. Some companies don't allow that -- to the extent that employment contracts and law permit -- because they don't want to risk losing valuable intellectual property. E.g. MS wouldn't want some software that could earn MS money (developed at MS expense) going into Linux for free.

And furthermore, recipients of free software contributions often require a release from the contributor's employer so they don't have to worry about the employer coming by later, showing that the employer owns the copyright, and demanding royalties for it.

So the suggestion is that we'd be able to tell if MS employees are contributing because there would be all these formal releases around.