Dear Madam & Sir,
I am contacting you on behalf of Linagora company, in reference to the
hosting by Google of the Google Code project designated "o-push",
accessible at http://code.google.com/p/o-push/.
Linagora (http://linagora.com/) is a Open Source Software Publisher and
has been a very strong proponent of Open Source software development in
France since 2000.
O-Push is an important component of Linagora's open source and
collaborative messenging solution OBM (http://obm.org), and this o-push
project was originally created at Linagora's initiative, in order to
provide activesync protocol functionality for this messenging solution.
Mr Thomas Cataldo, appearing as the current owner of the project, as
well as Mr Sylvain Garcia, appearing as a current committer, are both
former employees of Linagora, and it was in the course of the
performance of their employment contracts and for Linagora that they
were led to contribute to the o-push project hosted by Google. In fact,
most of the code contributed to the project was developed internally by
these employees of Linagora while performing their job, and therefore
belongs to Linagora under the relevant applicable law (French
Intellectual Property Code Article L113-9 §1 "/Unless otherwise provided
by statutory provision or stipulation, the economic rights in the
software and its documentation created by one or more employees in the
execution of their duties or following the instructions given by their
employer shall be the property of the employer and he exclusively shall
be entitled to exercise them./"). For example, Adrien Poupard and
Mathieu Baechler, who have contributed to the project (as you can check
in the updates), are currently employees of Linagora, and all code and
contributions committed by them to the o-push project has been provided
during the course of their jobs at Linagora.
Mr Thomas Cataldo resigned from Linagora in October 2010 and, at that
time, did not revert the ownership of the o-push Google Code project to
Linagora. Mr Garcia resigned as well.
Linagora chose not to try and retrieve the Google Code o-push project
immediately, mainly in the hope that the project would continue being
supported by the community and become stronger by itself, as a major
open source component of Active Sync functionality, focusing common
efforts by contributors outside of Linagora. However, the project
development on Google Code has been at at a standstill since December
10th, 2010, i.e. for more than a full year. In effect, almost all code
committed to the Google Code o-push project has been developed
internally at Linagora and belongs to this company.
In this context, Linagora wishes to retrieve official ownership of the
o-push project and actively resume development of that code, notably in
the aim of encouraging the development of o-push contributions, and in
the hopes of supporting an active open source software ecosystem around
o-push.
However, it has come to our attention that Mr Thomas Cataldo has
recently joined a direct competitor of Linagora and there is therefore a
strong probability that a direct request to him would be met with a
refusal and a purely expedient reprise of the project activity in order
to deprive Linagora of the use of the o-push project, of the
exploitation of its own contributed code, and of the opportunity to
bring a fresh, dynamic impulse to the project.
Upon thorough examination of the 8 criteria provided in your FAQ
(http://code.google.com/p/support/wiki/FAQ) for the retrieval of a
google code project, several of these criteria seem to be met in the
current situation :
1 - The o-push project has lain fallow for more than a full year ;
2 - Mr Cataldo seems to be squatting over the project in a context of
unfair competition practices by a Linagora competitor in the employ of
which he currently is ;
3 - Most if not all code in the o-push project has been developed and is
owned by Linagora, and Linagora wishes to continue development of that
code at the Google Code o-push project page ;
4 - o-push is a registered trademark belonging to Linagora for the
territory of France (under n°under n° 3894603), which you can
double-check by looking up O-PUSH in the french registered trademarks
database (http://bases-marques.inpi.fr/).
Additionally, you can note that there are quite a number of references
to Linagora OBM solution in the updates and commits to the project. OBM
is referenced in the updates dated Apr 02, Apr 19, Apr 27, Sep 8, Sep
23, Oct 21, Dec 10, 2010.
These are the grounds upon which Linagora respectfully bases a formal
request to Google aiming at benefitting from a transfer of ownership of
the o-push project http://code.google.com/p/o-push/ from Mr Thomas
Cataldo to our o-push technical team leader at Linagora, Mr Michel-Marie
Maudet ([email protected]).
I would be grateful for your feedback at the earliest convenient time.
Please do not hesitate to contact me should you require any further
information.
Sincerely,
--
*Ludovic SCHURR*
Chief Legal Officer / Directeur Juridique
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GROUPE LINAGORA
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92800 Puteaux
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Std : +33 (0)8 10 25 12 51
Port : +33 (0)6 72 23 39 75
E-mail : [email protected]
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