Koha community squares off against commercial fork

Koha community squares off against commercial fork

I am not a provider of legal counsel, but as I understand it, the ownership of computer code written within the New Zealand jurisdiction is simple. In the absence of any over-riding contractual agreements, any progress payments made to the program author by the commissioning entity gives the entity teh entire ownership rights to the code, on the other hand if the author of the code is not paid anything until the acceptance of the code then the ownership rights remain with the author.

Here in NZ it is not legal to use a dictionary word as a trade-mark. The word 'koha' is a perfectly good Maori - one of two official languages - word, and as such would not be available for registration as a trade mark within Aoteroa - New Zealand.

It is also not legal to describe an item for sale in a way which fails to describe it accurately. It would therefore be open to considerable debate as to whether it is acceptable to name something as 'koha' and then charge a set fee for it, because 'koha' is, by its very meaning and nature, a contribution to a communal activity which conforms to the custom of 'Unto each according to his need, and from each according to his ability'.