From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jun 21 19:45:11 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6E4391065675 for ; Thu, 21 Jun 2012 19:45:11 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from perrin@apotheon.com) Received: from oproxy7-pub.bluehost.com (oproxy7.bluehost.com [IPv6:2605:dc00:100:2::a7]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 1A81D8FC18 for ; Thu, 21 Jun 2012 19:45:11 +0000 (UTC) Received: (qmail 29608 invoked by uid 0); 21 Jun 2012 19:45:10 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO box543.bluehost.com) (74.220.219.143) by oproxy7.bluehost.com with SMTP; 21 Jun 2012 19:45:10 -0000 DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; q=dns/txt; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=apotheon.com; s=default; h=In-Reply-To:Content-Type:MIME-Version:References:Message-ID:Subject:To:From:Date; bh=3UgpyHKYSnCp13x+OlTfVicQbCqbuhTvotVD9dBpgtM=; b=FvAwjp7Ih3CGf802zn7Qc4cU800uS+N379yFGbzRvk79O07yXwM+CXI+TgN6N9u7hmvwDhOEDHf/dbrC8qSAhRW5oh5J71LSQFEMxAZ1LKmcglekQ6EkD6UsRSf8MX2w; Received: from [63.253.113.170] (port=41278 helo=localhost) by box543.bluehost.com with esmtpsa (TLSv1:AES128-SHA:128) (Exim 4.76) (envelope-from ) id 1ShnJV-0005Zg-1p for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Thu, 21 Jun 2012 13:45:09 -0600 Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2012 13:44:52 -0600 From: Chad Perrin To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20120621180200.GA575@hemlock.hydra> Mail-Followup-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <4FE1BD0E.5060300@pukruppa.de> <20120620224030.1a0dc3b4.freebsd@edvax.de> <20120621001809.da9ce415.freebsd@edvax.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) X-Identified-User: {2737:box543.bluehost.com:apotheon:apotheon.com} {sentby:smtp auth 63.253.113.170 authed with perrin@apotheon.com} Subject: Re: Why Clang X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2012 19:45:11 -0000 On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 12:25:22AM +0200, Wojciech Puchar wrote: > >You're being paid to write a program for a customer. You > > i don't talk that case, but if i am hired to write some part of > program as an employer in software company. There are basically four circumstances that might apply here, as far as I'm aware: 1. Your work is considered "work for hire", where you are just a cog in the corporate machine and the corporation is the "creator" or "author" of record (and thus the default copyright holder). This means you would have to get permission ("license") to use the work outside of your function as an employee. 2. Your work can be used by the employer under exclusive license, which means you cannot use the work yourself except under strictly limited conditions specified in law. 3. Your work can be transfered to the employer, so that though you are the default copyright holder an agreement (possibly an employment agreement, but generally requiring a distinct agreement separate from the employment agreement itself for this case) establishes the legal transfer of copyright from you to the employer. 4. Your work is provided to the employer under a non-exclusive license, which means you can then license it to others as well. By far the most common case for a standard employment relationship is case 1. Pathological edge-cases may adjust these circumstances. My assumptions in writing this are based on my experience with US copyright law. I am not a lawyer, and this does not constitute legal advice, but only an explanation of my understanding and perspective with regard to copyright law. > > > >BUT - as everyone is free to obtain, modify and re-issue GPL > >source code, I'm not sure such a consensus could be reached. > > by creating a BSD licenced fork - constructed from parts written by > all developers that - as you said - have personal right to their > code. This is pretty much exactly what happened with the Pentadactyl extension for Firefox. The people who had been doing the majority of development work for the Vimperator extension for a while, but were not the project "owner", took the code they had created and rewrote (from scratch) any additional code needed to make it work, creating the Pentadactyl project. The original Vimperator project used a copyleft license (the GPL), and the new Pentadactyl project used a copyfree license (I don't recall which, probably either the Simplified BSD License or the MIT/X11 License). -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]