[Wolves] GPL, IP and patents..

[Aquarius]

Lee Parkes spoo'd forth:
> Hi,
> The company I work for has recently seen fit to amend all of our contracts and
> get us to sign them agreeing to some new conditions. The bit I'm worried about
> regards the fact that they own my ass 24x7 and anything I do AT ANY TIME EVEN
> ON MY OWN EQUIPMENT, belongs to them. Now we use all Open Source, Free Software
> stuff other than the network equipment. I get the impression that if my
> employer tried to patent anything that falls under the jurisdiction of the GPL
> then they could get themselves in hot water. I also disagree, very strongly,
> with the idea that they own any ideas/inventions/whatever that I come up with
> even in my own time.
> 
> Has anyone got any opinions on this?

I'm going to sidestep the issue of whether this is legal or not. I've
heard about some companies trying to enforce this kind of onerous
restriction on their employees, and personally I think it's entirely
bogus, but: consult a lawyer.

However, RMS is very clear on how the GPL works. If you are placed in
a situation where you want to distribute GPL code and some other
restriction prevents you from complying with the GPL's requirements, then
you may not distribute that code at all. Note that the GPL is about
distribution, not working -- in practice, this wouldn't affect you at
all unless you wrote code that was GPLed and then tried to distribute it.
At that time, you would be distributing code without the permission of
the copyright holder to make it GPL, which would be against the terms
of the GPL[1], and therefore you would not be able to distribute that
code at all.

Aq.

[1] well, sort of. There's an iffy point here on whether that's actually
permissible. The FSF makes sure that people assign copyright on FSF
code back to the FSF because they think that it will strengthen their
case if someone ever challenges the licence, not because it's actually
a requirement of the GPL.

-- 
Using Cold Fusion to teach programming concepts is like using collage
to teach surgery.
	   -- Steven Champeon, webdesign-l