Question on OSD #5

[Matthew Flaschen]

Chris Travers wrote:
> On Nov 24, 2007 6:12 PM, Matthew Flaschen <matthew.flaschen at gatech.edu> wrote:
>> Chris Travers wrote:
> 
>> IANAL, but your employee would be in violation of their contract.  I'm
>> not sure about copyright law.
> 
> The question is whether a copyright license to the general public
> exists for modifications intended to remain private and never
> intentionally distributed by the author to other parties.  Given the
> Novel v. SCO issue on the APA amendment II, I would think not, but
> IANAL.

I think these are separate issues.

> A rogue employee distributing open source software
> in a clandestine manner would not qualify as an agreement with the
> company, and I would argue that this would be the case even if an
> officer of the company did so in a clandestine manner (for example, if
> the CEO took the software home and put it on his personal web site).

IANAL, but IIRC, I think even clandestine licensing actions the CEO
takes may be binding as a matter of law.

> In fact, I would suggest that private modifications
> which are never distributed are not open source in any meaningful
> sense.  However, this doesn't really make any real difference to the
> OSI or any other body.

Agreed.

Matt Flaschen