Freeing Squeak (license-wise)

John W. Sarkela sarkela at sbcglobal.net
Thu Mar 13 18:12:01 UTC 2003


On Thursday, March 13, 2003, at 08:59 AM, Jimmie Houchin wrote:

> I have seen that brought up as a possibility. But I don't know that 
> I've seen done in practice or in court. I could be wrong.
>
I'm reminded of some litigation in the mid 80's involving a media giant
and Miss Peggy Lee. When she wrote the songs for "Lady and the Tramp"
her contract with said media giant quite clearly spelled out that all 
rights
were retained for *all* forms of transcription of said intellectual 
property.
Said media giant maintained a protracted litigation on the claim that
she could not have possibly meant video recordings.
Do not underestimate the mouse. Get their attention and they may
start making claims with respect to developments of employees while
employed by said giant. Can you say Morphic? Can you afford
to support nuisance litigation???

> I've seen discussion about licenses being revoked but don't know 
> (personally) if its been done in such a situation as this. ?
>
Gee, I had a friend at a company called MITS in Albuquerque. One
of their contractors (initials B.G.) sued for ownership rights to a 12k
BASIC (that looked suspiciously like DEC BASIC) because they
implicitly allowed their clients to make copies of said BASIC.
This contractor won the litigation, MITS lost their ownership of
and license to the code (for which they had paid in full)  whilst said
contractor started a company called Microsoft.


John Sarkela
"Evian spelled backwards is naive."



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