On Tue, Mar 18, 2003 at 12:06:12PM +0200, Richard Braakman wrote:
> > If necessary, you do the NDAing at arm's length, something like:
> > A changes the program
> > E employs B under a contract that they don't distribute the
> > program or its source, etc
> > E asks A to give B a copy of the program
> > A gives B a copy of the program
> This would leave A free to distribute the modifications.
Sorry, it would leave A free to distribute the original program, but
the point is that it would leave B with a copy of the program to work on
(presumably under E's direction), but unable to give copies of it to
anyone else whenever he likes. You might consider E to be employing both
A and B (and thus that A is already under similar restrictions).
> If the program were GPLed, it _would_ stop B from being able to give
> copies to anyone unless the copies were unrestricted.
No, the GPL's satisfied here:
] 6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the
] Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the
] original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to
] these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further
] restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.
] You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to
] this License.
The only person redistributing the program is A. The person imposing
further restrictions is E -- not "You".
> I think the end result of your scenario is that only B is restricted.
That's the point though: you can end up stopping all your employees from
distributing the code through fairly standard employment contract terms,
and you're done - the ASP loophole's open again, and you can make your
modifications and stick them in your CGI directory.
If you want to generalise it, think of:
A = www.debian.org
B, C, D = employees
E = agent for employer
Each employee can download from A happily; each is under NDA with E, and
E never downloads anything so isn't bound by the license. B, C and D can
share their changes quite happily if they pass them around if "diff --ed"
form.
This is the harder way of doing it, of course; the easiest way is to
say that it's not the employees who own the copy of the program but the
company, and that all the work the employees do is a "work for hire"
and copyright is owned by the company; then there's no question of the
employees being able to distribute copies -- they don't own the copy
they have so they have no rights at all -- cf the various sourceless
beta tests of GPLed software that people have gotten away with.
Cheers,
aj
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
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