Keith Casey mailinglists-at-caseysoftware.com |nyphp dev/internal group
use| wrote:
On 1/11/07, Dell Sala <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
My own position on this as a freelance developer (never really
discussed or documented in contracts), has been that any code I
write, or open source code that I install for a client belongs to the
client -- as long as I can reuse the same code that I write for other
projects and clients. Thats a pretty loose position, but my
Just for clarity purposes, there are *licenses* and *copyrights* and
they are fundamentally different things. A license are terms under
which you use or grant usage of a copyrighted work. If you give
someone a *license*, they are bound to the terms of the license, but
they don't necessarily have any copyright (ownership) of the material.
All licenses - GPL, BSD, MPL, or the screwiest EULA you've ever read -
are based on the principles of copyright. If you grant ownership of
something to someone, they can do whatever they want with it and
determine their own license.
keith
Copyright is not ownership. One can "own" something yet not have the
copyright(s). One can control the copyright(s) of something without
owning it.
There are well established models of legal commerce regarding tangeable
things like books and photographs. The photographer "creates" a work (on
film, as a latent image) and is granted the rights to control
distribution of that work (he has a copyright). He may also own the
negative. If you sells you a print, you own the print, but not a right
to copy that print to make more (except as specifically allowed by law,
or by license, as an exception to the copyright).
What happens when the "thing" is not tangeable? What if the "negative"
is actually just code (as in a digital image, or a software program)? Or
what if it was just a thought, never "recorded" to any storage media?
Sorry folks. They are still figuring that one out.
Now the advocates of software copyrights, patents, creative commons,
free speech, save the whales, no nukes, and Impeach Bush can chime in
and continue the argument that has been going on for many years.
The actual answer has nothing to do with logic or reason IMHO, but is
whatever your expensive lawyer says you should do... today... to set up
your business the way you and your client's want it (provided you have a
good aware and experienced lawyer). Remember that lawyers are paid to
argue, so caveat emptor.
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