Another copyright question

[Marc Lanctot]

On 20/04/09 09:44 PM, Viktor Pavlenko wrote:
> I wrote a program at work because I couldn't find a good open source
> solution. Obviously, it is now a property of my employer. Initial
> request to my boss to make it available under GPL didn't meet
> understanding. So I shut up.
>
> But what if I re-wrote it in a completely different language,
> preserving the functionality and user interface (command line) as is
> and released under GPL, would it still be a copyright violation?

I don't know about copyright, but I assume you're under an NDA so it 
would be a breach of your contract (eg. your company owns the 
"intellectual property", not you).

If you go as far as changing the language implementation then I'd say 
you're probably covered for copyright because you can prove that it is a 
complete re-construction... but I would certainly prepare to be fired 
for it. I don't even think you need to use the different language. 
People make GPL versions of proprietary programs all the time and AFAIK 
there's never any trouble (unless you infringe on a patent which you 
don't own)... so I'd say your only worry is an NDA, which if written 
like most would likely prevent you from telling *anybody* about it, not 
just yourself.

Marc

-- 
Black holes are where God divided by zero.
   -- Steven Wright
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists