anderson@uwmacc.UUCP (Jess Anderson) (10/01/86)
This is a request for sources of information relating to conflicts of interest and potential violations of Unix license restrictions in certain circumstances. Please observe this caveat: I cannot undertake a comprehensive study of the *entire* field of licensing and conflicts of interest, for I have neither the time nor the training. However, in the circumstances about to be described (they are general enough, I think, to be of general interest to the net), my employer and I have mutual concerns and interests that could profitably be clarifi ed. The help of others in the matter would be appreciated, and I would be happy to summarize to the net what I discover. With that said: I work for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in its academic computing center. Among our machines is a Vax 785 running BSD 4.2 Unix (4.3 after this weekend, if we're lucky!). Our Unix license is restricted to "instruction and research," as a result of which we cannot put commercial users on this machine, although we can put them on our other machines. There really are two issues here. One involves the license and what can be done under it. The other is more general and concerns policies governing potential conflicts of interest for University employees who might do non-University work. I am one such person. We do not have an up-to-date, specific policy governing the second issue, and I personally find the first issue fairly vague. Among those on the net, there must be many universities with Unix licenses that are restricted more or less as ours is, at least so I understand from general impressions. To begin with (I am *so* afraid this is going to turn into a bottomless pit! :-), I would be interested to know if others share my problem and what they may have done about it. The problem is: what I do here includes writing user manuals, plus all sorts of other documents. If I were asked by a commercial publisher (I recently was, which is how this comes up) to undertake an assignment to write a book or part of a book on a Unix topic, could I accept the contract without getting myself or my employer into an untenable position with regard to the license. After all, I would be paid coin of the realm for my work under the contract (the contract would have nothing _per se_ to do with the University's business), and that could be construed as "commercial," not "instruction or research." Of course, to some degree it *would*, in fact be research: finding out how the damn thing *does* work. Also given: I would be on my own time and using my own machine (an XT clone) to do the actual writing. Further complicating the issues is a vague directive that says computing center employees cannot use computing center computers (their overhead accounts) for outside work. Yet more comlications exist (sorry, what can I do :-) -- we provide a separate rate structure for scholarly publication projects for our faculty. Although I am so-called academic staff, rather than faculty, I think I'm entitled to this rate, which is well below our commercial rate. As you can see, it's all a giant mess. Oh colleagues of the net, please bestow clarity upon my abject confusions! -- ==ARPA:====================anderson@unix.macc.wisc.edu===Jess Anderson====== | (Please use ARPA if you can.) MACC | | UUCP: {harvard,seismo,topaz, 1210 W. Dayton | | akgua,allegra,ihnp4,usbvax}!uwvax!uwmacc!anderson Madison, WI 53706 | | BITNET: anderson@wiscmacc 608/263-6988 | ==The sage acts without choosing.=========(Chuang Tsu)======================