meo@stiatl.UUCP (Miles O'Neal) (09/12/89)
Public Domain Widget Library Hassles
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Well, I have a face full of egg.
1) To date there is exactly 1 external contribution to the PDWL
widget library from anywhere outside my employer.
2) Even worse, I am losing a battle with a fell beast of the
counselus legalus variety. To whit, our august (or now, september)
corporate legal advisors don't seem to feel that MIT, DEC, Sun,
HP, or any of those other lightweights in the industry have any
idea about how to deal with copyrights & licenses. They insist we
have to LICENSE the software for use. As in, a contract duly signed
by our VP of PD and a "responsible party" (I suspect that means an
officer) of each other company wanting to use our code. The arguments
I have heard don't make any sense to me, but I have been assured
several times that our lawyers know best.
The sovereign State of Georgia requires (unless it changed recently)
that all legally binding contracts require a sum of money to change
hands ($1.00 being the minimum) for a contract to be legally binding.
The questions I put to the users of this group are:
----------------------cut-n-answer-n-reply----------------------------
1) If you could get a few hundred to a few thousand lines of
semi-guaranteed code by having a "responsible party" (or something
like that) sign a license (basically allowing you to use the stuff
as you saw fit, but not distribute it) and send us the sum of
$1.00 (US), would you go for it? Why or why not?
2) Would your local "responsible party" go for it? Why or why not?
3) Would they insist on running it by *your* company's legal department?
4) Do you even have access to a "responsible party"?
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Feel free to discuss thus herein, or to send me email. I have my opinions
about this, which no doubt show through, but I need feedback from the
X11 community at this point.
Thanks,
-Miles O'Neal
{yr fave backbone here}!gatech!stiatl!meo