[thelist] Copyright ownership under LGPL
Stephen Rider
evolt_org at striderweb.com
Thu Jun 17 10:15:56 CDT 2004
This client is asking you to reinvent the wheel. He's saying "I want
you to build something that goes under my car and holds it up, and
allows it to move smoothly along the ground, but you're not allowed to
use wheels or treads or the like because someone else has already
invented that -- you need to come up with something entirely new."
This is nonsense.
The problem is that the methods already created are extremely efficient
because of development time (millennia in the case of the wheel,
decades in the case of software). Somewhere along the line you are
going to use a similar methodology to something that you would use in
someone else's work, simply because it's a good way to accomplish the
task, and then this guy would maybe then sue you for breach of
contract.
I would not take the job unless he lightened up in the "full control of
copyright".
For that matter, I agree that you _have_ to use elements that have been
used before, because that's how web browsers work. The web is unlike
any other software really, because you are coding to work with an
interface over which you have no control -- the browser. Actually,
many browsers....
I would either charge him enough to support you for the next ten years
:) (by which point the tools we use to build websites have changed
enough to not interfere with your contract with him) or run screaming.
Either there's _no way_ this is for a simple family website (in which
case there's something fishy going on), or he is completely clueless
about software copyright.
Show him the GPL and try explaining how it works -- truly nobody is
going to sue him for copyright infringement for using Open-Source
software. If with that information he is willing to lighten up on his
draconian copyright demands, go for it. Otherwise, No Way.
On Jun 14, 2004, at 12:17 AM, David Bindel wrote:
> I have already written [software] released under the GNU Lesser
> General Public License (LGPL), but his website would require
> modifications.....
> The software I am making for him would be a heavily-modified offspring
> of my open source software, yet nevertheless, largely based on the
> original open source software.
You could sell him the copyright to the modifications, but even that I
would not do unless he gave me a _lot_ of money (and had a sunset
clause) since that would practically preclude you from making further
mods on your own to the Open Source software that you already created,
for fear of overlapping the mods you made for him.
Just my two cents. IANAL
Steve
(IANAL = "I Am Not A Lawyer")
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