A welcome change [LWN.net]

A welcome change

Posted Apr 19, 2003 5:59 UTC (Sat) by BrucePerens (subscriber, #2510)
In reply to: A welcome change by jvotaw
Parent article: An apology from Novell's CEO

This is water way under the bridge, but it appears that Jeff, unfortunately, brought a good deal of that on himself. Reading through old press coverage, it sounds as if he had some basic misunderstanding of what he could do in his own business with a work-for-hire that he'd produced for his previous employer. All of this is long over, and I assume that Jeff replaced any pieces that were in question with his own code.

That said, I did mention to Kris a while back that we want to clear up any remaining doubt about that code.

Bruce

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Re: A welcome change

Posted Apr 19, 2003 7:08 UTC (Sat) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]

I know it was a long time ago, but according to his lkml posts (which were often rambling and/or flame bait) he still had problems with threats of legal action just a couple of years ago. Supposedly he left the state of Utah and moved to New Mexico because of it.

He also mentioned that at one point Novell considered him "tainted" due to the doctrine of inevitable disclosure. I'm not sure how long such a thing might last; there are definitely limits to anti-competitive clauses in contracts. Replacing the code wouldn't seem to help because we're talking about trade secrets. Basically someone else would have to write new code without looking at the old to be completely sure there was no problem with "tainting". Of course I could be completely confused since I'm not a lawyer.

Does anyone know the current status of NWFS or MANOS? At one point he was going to assign copyright to Alan Cox, but I'm pretty sure Alan didn't want them.

He also had a run-in with Microsoft over similar issues with the kernel NTFS support. I think those were resolved more conclusively.

Re: A welcome change

Posted Apr 19, 2003 16:08 UTC (Sat) by rossb (guest, #10747) [Link]

You mention his "often rambling and/or flame bait" messages on the topic, that's usually a clear sign that someone doesn't understand how "work for hire" functions, or they don't know how to negotiate terms of a contract.

It's easy, you sign up for a stint of writing or producing materials, and you get paid in full for it. The company gets the product, you get paid, they never come after you if you don't try to misappropriate the product.

Rest assured, if there's a real need for a replacement to that code, someone will undertake it. That's the great thing about this community (one of the great things, anyway) the information/code will find a way to be free.

(Different) Ross

Re: A welcome change

Posted Apr 19, 2003 19:17 UTC (Sat) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]

Yes, but just to be clear, I don't believe that anyone is claiming he "reused" the same code. The claim is that he is using knowledge and experience from when he wrote that code -- knowledge he wouldn't have otherwise. So any work on filesystems might be suspect. But since Microsoft hired him to work on NTFS, maybe I shouldn't be too concerned.

A welcome change

Posted Apr 19, 2003 21:17 UTC (Sat) by kmagnusson (guest, #10670) [Link]

Like you said, this ia water way under the bridge. Off the top of my head, I don't know the status of that code. I will ask my attorney counterpart on the Open Source Review Board about it and let you know sometime.

........... kris