On Wed, Aug 20, 2003 at 03:27:23PM +0200, Andreas Raab wrote:
> > PS. Can Alan or you please clarify the ownership question of 
> > Disney work that keeps popping up?
> 
> I cannot since IANAL and the term "ownership" would have to be interpreted
> in a legally binding way. The only thing I can say for sure is that Disney
> (including the CEO and the lawyers) knew and approved of portions of our
> work done as open source and I am pretty sure they understood (maybe not the
> CEO but most definitely the lawyers) that someone else could take what we
> did as open source and give it a new direction, make products out of it etc.
> 

IANAL either, but this is fairly straightforward.  Unless the
contracts of the Squeak Central members at Disney say otherwise, then
code written as part of the employment by Disney is owned by Disney.
Disney is the copyright holder on it, period.  Disney is the only
entity that can relicense (excluding sublicencing) the Squeak code
written during this period.  Isn't this clear?

If I write a C program and release it under the GPL, then it is "free"
and anyone can use it under the terms of the GPL.  But no-one except
me can distribute it under the terms of the MIT license.  This is
exactly what Disney did by releasing (some of the) Squeak code written
for it under the SqueakL.  

I suppose there are other senses of ownership (the Squeak community "owns"
the code because we have a vested interest in it, maintain it, and use it).
However, I think that from the point of view of (USA) copyright law, it
is quite clear that Disney holds the copyright on large chunks of Squeak.
(Unless, as previously stated, your contracts made you the copyright
holders.  People keep asking about this point, and not getting answers).

Bye,
Joshua



> Cheers,
>   - Andreas
> 
>