> If you work for an employer under a contract in which all intellectual
> property created during employment belongs to your employer [...]
This also holds true when the employer is a university -- in fact, it's
generally the case whether you've explicitly signed a contract to that
effect or not. If a software developer works for a university and the
application in question is in any way related to their job and/or they
used any university resources, then it's quite likely that the
university owns the copyright. You must petition the appropriate
intellectual property gatekeeper in order to release the software as
open source; if permission is given, the university will probably
specify the software license.
For those who work in academia, there will be some type of intellectual
property handbook that specifies faculty, staff, and student
responsibilities and procedures for disclosing intellectual property.
I've gone through the intellectual property disclosure process twice
here at my university in order to release locally developed applications
as open source. I discussed this IP disclosure process, as well as
other factors to consider in releasing open source software in a LITA
2005 paper [1].
-- Michael
[1] "The New Books List: An Open Source Software Case Study"
2005 LITA National Forum
http://www.lita.org/ala/lita/litaevents/litanationalforum2005sanjoseca/0
5forumsched.htm
# Michael Doran, Systems Librarian
# University of Texas at Arlington
# 817-272-5326 office
# 817-688-1926 cell
# [EMAIL PROTECTED]
# http://rocky.uta.edu/doran/
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of Godmar Back
> Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2006 8:47 PM
> To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Copyright under free software licenses
>
> If you work for an employer under a contract in which all intellectual
> property created during employment belongs to your employer, put in
> your employer's name. If you retain the IP rights, put in your name.
> If other contribute to a file, it depends on the size of their
> contribution whether it warrants a sharing of the copyright.
>
> As copyright holder, you retain important rights, including the right
> to license the same code under a different license, including a
> non-open source license, in the future.
>
> Projects such as GNU projects put in their organization, but
> developers are typically required to submit copyright assignment forms
> in which they declare that the copyright of their contributions goes
> to the foundation.
>
> - Godmar
>
> On 9/14/06, William Denton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > What do ad hoc software projects do about naming a
> copyright holder when
> > putting their work under a free software license? The licenses I've
> > looked at have "insert copyright holder here," but what's
> the best thing
> > to put there when it's a few people hacking something
> informally? Apache
> > and Perl and the BSDs, for example, have formal organizations, but I
> > don't. If someone wants to put out FooMumble under an MIT
> license, in the
> > hopes other people will be interested, what's the best
> source for advice
> > about what to put in the copyright statement?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Bill
> > --
> > William Denton : Toronto, Canada : www.miskatonic.org : www.frbr.org
> >
>
