Plan 9 license

[Chris Sloan]

On Wed, Aug 30, 2000 at 06:33:00PM -0700, David Johnson wrote:
> On Wed, 30 Aug 2000, Chris Sloan wrote:
> 
> > Is this really true?
> > 
> > My understanding was that a legal entity can make private
> > modifications to GPL software and is allowed to keep those
> > modifications private, but if they choose to distribute the modified
> > version, they are required to distribute the source to the
> > modifications under the GPL.
> 
> If it is wrong for you as a person to give your friend a copy of a
> modified GPL program, then forbid him to redistribute it, then it is
> equally wrong for a corporation to do forbid the same of an employee
> who it has given a copy. It doesn't matter if the corporation is a
> legal entity or not, because the employee definitely *is*.

Possible interpretation 1: When an employee is working for a
corporation, his actions are considered, for legal purposes, to be the
actions of the corporation (or something like that).  As such his
actions may cause certain rights to be granted to the corporation, but
not to him personally.

Possible interpretation 2: When the employee is working for a
corporation, his actions are considered, for legal purposes, to be his
own, and it is through NDA's and employment contracts and such that
the corporation whatever rights it gets from those actions.

Under 2, the employee would probably have the right to distribute the
"private" modifications if he was given a copy of them.  Under 1, he
might not.  I'm not sure which is closer to US law.

	Chris

-- 
Chris Sloan
cds at ghs.com
Systems Software Engineer
Green Hills Software