Hello Tom!
These are very complicated questions and I don't feel I have enough
knowledge of the legal aspects to be able to answer.
As I answered the last time (I think I did), I hope the Software Freedom
Conservancy or some other similar organization will solve these problems
for us. I have started discussions with the Software Freedom Conservancy
but so far nothing has happened.
/Linus
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tom Morris [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: den 22 augusti 2006 20:45
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED];
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Cc: [email protected]
> Subject: FW: Intellectual property ownership, licenses, etc
> Importance: High
>
> Hi,
>
> I sent the attached message to the ArgoUML dev list a month ago
> (http://argouml.tigris.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=dev&msgNo=20056), but
got
> no reply. Since it's an important topic, could I ask each of you, as
the
> official ArgoUML project leaders, to at least briefly reply to the
first
> two
> questions:
>
> 1. Who owns the ArgoUML brand, trademark, logos, etc?
> 2. What assumptions, if any, can be made about the intellectual
property
> provenance for the ArgoUML source code?
>
> Thanks and regards,
> Tom
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tom Morris [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2006 2:30 PM
> To: '[email protected]'
> Subject: Intellectual property ownership, licenses, etc
>
>
> A potpourri of intellectual property concerns raised by recent
> investigations:
>
> 1. Brand - Who owns the ArgoUML name, trademarks, logos, etc? While
> investigating the last Eclipse plugin (circa 2003) I discovered a link
on
> the Sygel site to argouml.com which I assumed wouldn't work, but to my
> surprise it does. It currently redirects to Tigris, but that would be
a
> great "submarine" strategy for someone lying in wait until the brand
> achieved enough commercial value. That web site appears to be owned
by a
> company called "Method Labs."
>
> 2. IP Provenance - What are the project rules for ownership,
provenance
> (chain of ownership), etc of things contributed to the project? How
are
> these rules (if any) enforced? An example of the type of thing
relevant
> here is the Apache CLA http://apache.org/licenses/#clas. Does anyone
know
> if the companies who've done closed source forks have done independent
due
> diligence on the source pool or are they all just winging it and
hoping
> for
> the best?
>
> 3. License - The BSD license is certainly flexible, but it has some
> drawbacks too. One thing that we have historically been unable to do
is
> achieve any type of commercial / open-source partnership or symbiosis.
> All
> of the commercial ventures based on ArgoUML (Poseidon, MyEclipse,
Sygel)
> have been closed source forks which have taken source code (and
sometimes
> developers), but never given anything back. Using a license with a
> different balance of rights and responsibilities like the CPL or EPL,
> might
> encourage a better mix of contributors in the community. Of course,
> whether
> or not we have the flexibility to use a different license will depend
on
> the
> answer to topic #2. Another approach to more successful interaction
with
> commercial ventures would be to build ourselves up to a size that
makes
> doing any type of fork infeasible (a la Apache), but that would seem
> difficult to achieve.
>
> There's been some talk of formalizing the organization of the ArgoUML
> project and each of these topics would be critically important in that
> context, but they're also relevant to our current project structure.
>
> Tom
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