🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <85vkmf$jhq$1@pyrite.mv.net>, Bill Todd <billtodd@foo.mv.com> wrote:
>If it is indeed within the spirit of the GPL to allow a corporation to make
>multiple copies of its own enhanced code for the use of its employees, it
>doesn't seem inconsistent for it to be able to make those copies available
>for limited use by external parties (just as it does to its own employees),
>as long as it retains ownership of and control over those copies and does
>not charge the external parties for use of the code, either directly or
>indirectly, or permit them to charge others, directly or indirectly, by
>virtue of their use of it.  That is pretty much the effect of 'distribution'
>under an NDA.

 Disclaimer: IANAL, and I'm in the UK too.

 Indeed, companies often do just this. If you're acting as the agent
for a company, you may be given things (and the use of things) that are
the company's - pens, for example, or computer time. That doesn't make
those things yours (if it did, you'd have to pay income tax on them 
as a benefit in kind, for example), and you're not allowed, for example,
to use them for personal gain per se (though the company may be obliged to
make them available to you for personal gain - R vs. Halford).

[snip]
>Stefaan A Eeckels <Stefaan.Eeckels@ecc.lu> wrote in message
>news:85utai$76i$1@justus.ecc.lu...
[snip]
>> If a corporation is a legal person, are copies made *by the corporation*,
>> but used *by its employees* to be seen as distribution, or to be seen
>> as copying by an individual. The legal answer to this question will
>> depend on the definition of a legal person, and on a whole ream of
>> other laws that the judge considers relevant to the particular case.

 True. I suspect a court would be unwilling to attach contractual
obligations to any entity without some sort of positive action to create
them, though - courts are generally unwilling to bind companies to implicit
obligations, as this would be.

 More importantly, however, this distinction between property owned by an
employee and property provided to them is (1) well-established in law, and
(2) the only thing that allows companies to own software (otherwise when you
gave the code you'd written to someone else, it would implicitly become
theirs). Of course, you could finesse this, but it'd be a horrible piece of
law.

>>
>> One similar discussion I can recall is whether e-mail addressed to an
>> individual on a computer owned by his employer is covered by the
>> privacy laws.

 .. though this is made much more complicated in the UK by the
 aforementioned R vs. Halford (employees have a reasonable expectation
 of being able to make private telephone calls through their employer's
 systems). In the UK, successive employment tribunals have, however,
 rejected some expectations of general use of computers (for example,
 to surf the web), though whether they did this on the basis of
 there being no expectation, or on the basis of the appelant having
 too high an expectation, I don't know.

[snip]
>> ie entering into contracts). Whether this is enough to make copying
>> onto a number of machines owned by that corporation not equivalent
>> to distributing the software would need to be tested in court.

 FWIW, I reckon it's not distribution, it is copying, it is covered
by section 6, and since the company is distributing to itself, no
obligation to employees, agents, or in fact anyone else is acquired.

>>
>> The law is like statistics --the obvious answer is often incorrect ;-)
 
 .. usually because of past legal arguments of the form:
 
 `Statue law says X. Hmm.. common law says Y. Therefore, the correct
 answer is Z, but I don't like it and I'm going to say A instead.'


Richard.
-- 
Principles are things that everyone thinks everyone else should have.