ask for APSL? for real this time?

Andrew C. Greenberg werdna at mucow.com
Sun Jan 11 13:49:35 UTC 2004


On Jan 11, 2004, at 7:12 AM, Lothar Schenk wrote:

> Goran Krampe quoted:
>
>> "Portions of Squeak are:
>> Copyright (c) 1996 Apple Computer, Inc.
>> Copyright (c) 1997-2001 Walt Disney Company, and/or
>> Copyrighted works of other contributors.
>> All rights reserved."
>
> Which leads me to a lot of questions:
>
> Which part of the code belongs to Apple, which part belongs to Disney, 
> which
> part belongs to which other contributors?

Under work made for hire doctrine, virtually everything developed by 
SqC, at least, during their tenure at Apple belongs to Apple.  
Virtually everything developed by SqC, at least, during their tenure at 
Disney belongs to Disney.  (Same with Xerox by the way).

> Is there a reliable record?

The best we have are the two and three-letter initials in the change 
set and the recollections of the indiividuals -- happily, Squeak itself 
makes an excellent record of deltas, embodied in the source files and 
changes.

> What
> would be the granularity of dividing the code into different ownership:
> packages? class hierarchies? individual subclasses? changesets? 
> individual
> methods? Is Squeak-L applicable and valid in all cases?

Generally, all of those, and not only indiividual methods -- but also 
lines of code within them.

> Which conditions have to be met to make self-developed code be 
> (demonstrably)
> non-derivative?

Generally, it is common sense: they not be derived at all from the 
earlier code.  Problem is, the burden is on the Defendant to prove 
non-derivation once a plaintiff shows mere access plus similiarity.

> What if an author implements new code by modeling it after
> existant code, for example a Foo Browser (with Foo=application objects)
> modeled after one of the existing browsers?

You begin to understand the problem.

> Can she still claim it to be her
> work? Would it be a possible violation of Squeak-L (not protective of 
> Apple
> rights) if she released her work under MIT only or even dual-licensed 
> it
> under Squeak-L and MIT? Are there similar implications if I subclass 
> one of
> my classes from an existing class and override some of the methods with
> roughly similar code?

None of these questions can be legally answered in the abstract -- the 
devil is in the details.
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