On Wed, Mar 30, 2005 at 05:41:10AM +0200, M�ns Rullg�rd wrote: > > I'd question whether that'd apply to a *free* system, anyway. I havn't > > looked at these cases (since I don't know which they are), but I recall > > a case that sounds just like it: an author of a work created (under > > contract) for a movie claimed that no license to actually use that material > > was granted, but as the paid-for work was useless without a license to use > > it, a license was implied. That doesn't seem relevant where the work > > is being given out entirely for free; the creator has no obligation to > > anyone else to grant a license to make the library's release useful. > > (For a commercial SDK, this would seem to apply to header files.) > > So now the degree of protection by copyright depends on how much you > charge for it? What if someone gets paid to develop open source?
Then, I'd imagine--which is the best I can do; this is over my layman's head--that the person that paid him would receive such an implicit license for the header files. That is, if I pay you to write a library for use in my work, you can't say after the fact: "here's the library, you can use it all you want, but you can't copy the material in the headers", since the work I paid for only has value if I can actually distribute programs that use it. (Just as special effects created for a movie only have value if the movie producer can actually put it in the movie.) I don't see that this affects open source as such: it's between the creator of the work and the person that paid him to do so. The license other parties receive is unrelated, and the creator can--other contracts so on permitting, of course--license or not license to other people however he pleases. (Maybe I'm miles off; I'm open to informed corrections.) -- Glenn Maynard -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
