Re: SCO/IBM legal issues

[Larry Hall <cygwin-lh at cygwin dot com>]

Andrew DeFaria wrote:


> What does this all have to do with Cygwin? Well Cygwin comes from Redhat 
> and Redhat has recently thrown it's hat into the ring WRT the SCO/IBM 
> battle. Perhaps that's why we don't hear much from people here (and 
> maybe they aren't allowed to talk about it). But what does this all say 
> about Open Source in general? Are projects such as Cygwin, Mozilla, et. 
> al. now all possibly subject to previous employers making intellectual 
> property claims if their current or former employees contribute to Open 
> Source?


Well, in order to contribute anything of significance to the Cygwin DLL,
you have to send a copyright assignment form signed by your employer
(<http://cygwin.com/assign.txt>) to Red Hat.  Presumably, this should be
kept up-to-date, though there is the potential for lapses.  To the extent
that all contributors have a current copyright assignment form on file at
Red Hat from their employer, there should be no question about IP rights
for Cygwin contributions.

I'd like to make a note that discussion of this topic on this list is
only pertinent to this list if it confines itself to Cygwin.  Discussion
of effects on other projects, of SCO's actions or motivations in it's legal
battle with IBM and/or others, or of the effects these actions will have
on Linux is off-topic here.  I'm sure there is a list somewhere out there
where all this is 'on-topic' though.  If anyone feels the urge to chime in
on some non-Cygwin issue in this regard, see if you can find one of those
lists instead. :-)

--
Larry Hall                              http://www.rfk.com
RFK Partners, Inc.                      (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office
838 Washington Street                   (508) 893-9889 - FAX
Holliston, MA 01746


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