Bhaskar sent me the following last night and asked me to post this. Cameron --
Since I am on the proverbial trip from hell (someday, I'll tell you about all the missed connections, cancelled flights, botched reservations, bus trip around London and flying all around Europe), I can ramble for a bit comparing intellectual property to land. I don't have the ability to post to the Hardhats list from my Blackberry, so if the following does not replicate what has been posted (since my Blackberry may not have picked up all posts, this analogy may be redundant), would you please post this for me? Thank you very much. Regards -- Bhaskar ---------------------- Caveat: I'm no intellectual property expert. Act on these words at your own risk! Perhaps it would help the discussion on VistA intellectual property to note that IP ownership has many similarities to land ownership, and that there are two orthogonal issues, ownership and permission to use. You can own intellectual property, as long as your ownership does not conflict with that of another. This ownership is claimed by patents and copyrights, in much the same way that you can claim land ownership. One distinction between a patent and a copyright is that the former gives you ownership of an idea in (just about) any form in which that idea is expresses, or can be expressed, even if not currently expressed. A copyright is much more limited in that it only gives you ownership of your expression of an idea. A patent implies that the State has (in theory) at least made some (even if only cursory) examination of your property claim, and approved it, in much the way that the State may issue a title deed for a piece of land that you own. Just as land ownership may not give you mineral or groundwater rights, a patent does not give absolute and unbounded rights. A copyright is more limited claim, like a "No grazing" sign, such as a rancher might put up when he (thinks he) has the right to have his cattle graze on land he doesn't own. Even a registered copyright does not imply that the State has opined on your claim of ownership. Public domain simply means that there is no owner, just as no one claims air. As long as you can find a buyer, even public domain material can be sold, just as you might compress pure mountain air and sell it in bottles labelled "PerriAir". You may even restrict the sale of PerriAir to polluted large cities, someone else may give away the same mountain air, etc. SAIC's creation of CHCS is analogous to PerrAir. A license is the granting of a right to use, in much the way that you may give someone permission to cross your land. An open source free software (OSFS) license is like giving permisson not just to cross your land, but also to improve it, such as by digging a well or clearing a campsite. This leads to the concept of license compatibility. You may chose a license for someone else to use your improvements that is different from the terms of the license under which you have access to the land and existing improvements as long as the terms of the license you grant to your improvements do not conflict .with the terms of the license granted to you for what existed before. While there are any areas of compatibility, a key area is virality. A non-viral OSFS license gives the you the right to improve someone else's land, and, for example, to charge people to use it and to limit their ability to improve upon your improvement. A viral OSFS license gives you an ability to charge for it, but limits what you can charge for and/or how you charge for it, and in particular requires that you allow others to improve upon your improvement. I hope someone finds this useful... Otherwise, there's always the DELETE key... -- Bhaskar ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: InterSystems CACHE FREE OODBMS DOWNLOAD - A multidimensional database that combines robust object and relational technologies, making it a perfect match for Java, C++,COM, XML, ODBC and JDBC. www.intersystems.com/match8 _______________________________________________ Hardhats-members mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
