[ANN] Closure Compiler

Jim.Gettys at hp.com Jim.Gettys at hp.com
Wed Mar 26 16:23:20 UTC 2003


Ironically, public domain is *not* a good state to be in (without
an explicit statement of it), if you want code to be freely used.

Here's why:

Many/most commercial people want/need to know the copyright state
of things they use, and won't touch code or works that have no
copyright statement at all.  They worry about someone suing them
for using code that came from somewhere and misappropriated.
A statement that the copyright is in fact owned by someone is actually
quite reassuring.

The MIT license was devised *explicitly* to for this problem (IBM
wouldn't use code with no statement of ownership, and I think this
is actually very common among companies).  We wanted X code to be usable
by everyone, and I was involved somewhat in the MIT copyright drafting;
this is my memory of why it was drafted the way it is.

So you are safer to claim ownership, and then give away all rights
covered under copyright law, if you want to really put something out
for anyone to use in any way fit and actually get them to use it.
With the exception of the "do not
take my name in vain without permission" and the commonly included
"don't sue me for something I gave you for free" clauses (which are
probably not legally necessary, but serve as a reminder to people not
to do truly dumb things), that was/is the intent of the MIT license.

I have been worried for years about patents, of course.  I had a talk
with Scott Peterson's, HP's IP lawyer who works on open source recently
and is in our building (the merger has had its good points; and Scott
is not the typical lawyer, either), and no longer have anywhere
as many worries as  I once did.

Scott told me that there is an implicit license granted by the
granted (if they also hold a patent that code implements) for the
intended purpose. Scott says there is case law about using such patent
license too far afield from its use as implied by the purpose of the
issued code, but I no longer worry about whether any MIT licenced code
has submarine patent problems from the issuer of that code
(no way to prevent other unknown third party submarines, however).  Of course,
your legal advice is fundamentally up to you and your lawyer; any
advice you get you should get on your own from decent counsel, and not
from this hearsay.

                                - Jim

--
Jim Gettys
Cambridge Research Laboratory
HP Labs, Hewlett-Packard Company
Jim.Gettys at hp.com



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