On 10/31/10 3:47 PM, Brandon S Allbery KF8NH wrote:
On 10/29/10 19:12 , wren ng thornton wrote:
But this only holds for so long. Once there's some major refactoring and the parts of network and network-bytestring are mixed beyond recognition, then there is only the combined work. The University's portion cannot be extracted and considered under the University's license. The combined work
Copyright law doesn't operate this way in most jurisdictions.
Sure it does. After there's been enough mixing, few courts will find enough evidence to say that these three identifiers or that particular algorithm came from such-and-so contributor without any contribution by others. That such-and-so contributed will remain in effect in perpetuity, as will the license under which their contribution is released (for all intents and purposes, US IP law being what it is), but the exact specification of what artifact within the combined work corresponds to the contribution will be lost (barring sufficient evidence from VCSes and the like). Yes, _technically_ there's still an artifact in there somewhere, but a court must decide whether some specific act infringes on the rights of such-and-so, and once enough mixing has happened a reasonable court would not have a lot of evidence that such-and-so's rights were violated (assuming no violation of the general license for the entirety of the combined work). Now, if there is not a lot of mixing or if such-and-so's contribution was a specific algorithm that is recognizably still in use, then the court would be able to identify the specific content of such-and-so's contribution and therefore would be able to reasonably conclude that someone has violated such-and-so's rights (specifically) even if they have not violated the general license for the combined work. The law and the court's ruling on the law are two very different things, especially when it comes to IP for computer programs et al. -- Live well, ~wren