🚀 go-pugleaf

Summary of responses:

	- There were two requests for any information that I may find out;		evidently some (few) others are concerned.

	- There was one negative response from someone who has "been 
	around this issue for years".  He claims that "nobody owns ISODE
	so nobody can give you the right to do anything."  I could not get		through to him via email, but I would be interested in finding out
	how his "legal folks" can justify their risk-taking.

Conclusions:


	1. The origination of ISODE code is clouded. 

	2. There have been no tracking systems put into place to ensure that
	the originator's rights to the code have been passed to the ISODE
	group. 

	3. Commercial use of ISODE by any company is subject to risk of 		future claims of origination and intellectual property rights by		the originators.


Recommendation:

	I recommend to the new consortium that distributes this code that
	they resolve the ownership and origination problems if a goal of the		ISODE code is to be used in commercial products.

Original posting:


Subject: Ownership of ISODE code
Status: R


We are building an application using ISODE code and we have come upon 
a problem.  There appears to be no way we can track the originality of
the source code; therefore, we cannot testify as to the owner of the
code nor to the rights of the distributor of the code to license it to 
anyone.
This could lead to some very nasty situations where the original owner
comes around to "claim his/her rightful possessions".  As we are all 
aware, the intellectual property rights issues in software can be very
cloudy.
My questions for discussion:

	1. Who owns the code (and therefore has the right to distribute it)?
	  Note: Marshall Rose will not respond except to point me in the 
	   direction of the manual preface, which is, of course, useless 	           for answering this question.

	2. Is there some agreement that each contributor signs regarding 
	 the disposition of the code?  If not, why do you think the ISODE	         group has the right to distribute the code?

	3. What are other companies who distribute products with ISODE code
	 doing about this originality issue?  Are they liable for surprises?

I am manifestly interested in seeing the use of ISODE code throughout the
computer community; witness the fact that I am using it myself.  However, 
I think that these origin issues need to be resolved before companies who
worry about these issues can participate.

Thanks.

Note: I have sent a question about this to bug-isode@nisc.psi.net and 
received no response.

If you send reply by email, I will summarize.

Response:

From: cwm@palo-alto.ca.us (Chris Moore)
Message-Id: <9105211644.AA00805@sooner.palo-alto.ca.us>
To: allan@wookie.dbaccess.com
Subject: Re: Ownership of ISODE code
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso.dev-environ
In-Reply-To: <9105172345.AA14811@wookie.dbaccess.com>
Organization: -
Cc: 
Status: R

In article <9105172345.AA14811@wookie.dbaccess.com> you write:
>This could lead to some very nasty situations where the original owner
>comes around to "claim his/her rightful possessions".  As we are all 
>aware, the intellectual property rights issues in software can be very
>cloudy.

You are not going to find any tangible evidince to support a claim to
originality on ISODE.  I've been around this issue for years - on both
sides of the fence.  Nobody "owns" ISODE so nobody can give you the
right to do anything.  You might argue that Marshall is ISODE but he
won't get anywhere close to signing anything.  

In the past, after having similar frustrations folks have sat down with
the legal folks and explained the situation.  Once everyone understands
the situation it is just a matter of working the text of a license
statement, etc.  

  - Chris
-- 
C. Allan Rofer                    INTERNET: allan@dbaccess.com
c/o DB Access Inc.                UUCP: {uunet,mips}!troi!allan
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