Nothing contained in this post should be considered legal advice.  If you wish to understand copyright, licensing, and all its implications, please read the sources yourself.  This is a summary of my situation and analysis.

A few weeks ago, I got what might be considered a nasty message in reference to this site.  In order to not put words in the author's mouth, here it is verbatim: 

Recently, while flipping through a recent issue of php|architect, I came across a familiar name: Hunter Jensen.

Hunter and I met at ZendCon 06 when we shared a hotel room for the week. At the time, he was an active user of QCodo and generally working with a number of customers along that front. Somewhere along the way, he decided to consider the dark side... a degree in law.

(cue scary music now)

Seriously though... if you've been on any forum or mailing list for more than 3 days, you've seen the IANAL (I Am Not a Lawyer) abbreviation. While we can't keep up to date on every single aspect, there are some thing that we need to be aware of and track. I think licensing issues (GPL vs Public Domain vs etc, etc) is one of the biggest issues that make our lives difficult, but there are a number of others...

In my previous discussion of the Open Source Community - I described the fundamental dichotomy that exists in the two halves of the community. Generally, we all get along and drive towards similar goals... even if our motivations are a bit different and our goals don't completely align. Anyway, with the recent release of GPL3, it didn't take a rocket surgeon to see that things were going to get excited.

After last week's post on "Business for Geeks 301: All your base are belong to us", I received a note from a fellow developer whom I happen to respect where he called me to task. He asked me not to share his name, but for simplicity's sake, let's call him Dade Murphy:

DM: Hrmmm ... You seem to take an awfully hard stance on what is really a Grey Area situation ... (Business for Geeks 301)
[snip my response]
DM: Ah, but you see ... companies blur the line as well. I've worked at companies that outright said that it was ok to use company equipment to do non-company stuff ... and that it was even ok to do non-work stuff during 'work hours', as LONG as you still put in 8 hours of work. Since that was a bonus to the company, since it meant you were in that chair for longer than 8 hours ;)
[snip, more of my yammering]
DM: Plus ... there is a real gray area/line/gradient ... and where to draw the black line, is difficult: 'working on company work only' --> solving an office dispute by hitting imdb.com --> Hitting Amazon --> Checking personal email --> Participating in an online forum --> Answering a few questions on an open source project --> Taking a 'mental break' to play some video game --> Taking a mental break to write some non-work-code --> oing significant non-work-coding --> Giving out your office phone# as your private companies support line.

Sorry for bringing this meme up but I couldn't think of a better way to describe the idiocy of the situation around PromoterForce detailed in the post "The Dangers of Moonlighting".

"I was recently “let go” from my job of three years for violating my employee agreement for allegedy working on a side business and not properly disclosing this to my employer. In addition, I’m now fighting my employer’s claim that because I did some writing on my blog during work hours, my startup’s IP is their property."

Just prior to the release of the updated dotProject Manual last week, a good friend and collegaue pointed out that there were no clear rules on distribution within an organization. Other than noting that it was copyrighted material, I did not explicitly deny or allow any specific rules. Point taken.

First of all, I have no desire to institute any enforcement mechanisms. I believe that the vast majority of people who wish to or who have bought the Manual want to Do the Right Thing(tm). The last thing I should do is make their lives more difficult. Therefore, I took after The Pragmatic Programmers by not implementing a DRM mechanism and instead embedding the name and email address of the purchaser in the footer of every page. I believe this will discourage the honest people from distributing it without getting in their way.

Nothing included in this post should be construed as anything remotely resembling legal advice. I am not a lawyer, CaseySoftware does not provide legal consultation, and your decisions must be based on your specific sitatuation.

The last time I wrote about legal issues with a mISV, I wrote specifically about some of the differences between license and copyright and some of the related issues to be aware of. Recently, I realized that I missed a completely different and much more important aspect of the whole process...