Work legalities

[James Vasile]

Shachar Shemesh wrote:
> Jeremy White wrote:
> >> If you are employed to do programming (even at a university), or have
> >> made an agreement with your employer, school or anyone else saying it
> >> owns software you write, then you and we need a signed document from
> >> them disclaiming any rights they may have to the software.
> Wouldn't a paper saying they keep their rights, but approve the LGPL
> distribution also work? Would that still require us to have a written
> statement? After all, we do not require written from other people.

Sample text for LGPL release

To the extent ACME Corporation ("Company") has any copyright interest
in the contribution written by Jane Doe for the program "Wine",
including original Wine code and documentation and support files,
changes and enhancements to Wine and files, and any future
modifications of Wine and files, Company hereby licenses that
contribution under the GNU Lesser General Public License.  Company
affirms that it has no other obligation or interest that would
undermine this license, or the use of the Wine, and will do nothing to
undermine it in the future.

[signature of John Smith], 30 March 2006
John Smith, Vice President, ACME Corp.

And, yes, a writing is still needed.  Documentation of the right to
release code is important.  Employers are usually different from
authors, both in their interaction with the copyrights and their
interaction with the project, hence the different treatment.


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