[PLUG] What to do when you can't find the author?

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky znmeb at cesmail.net
Wed Nov 16 02:20:55 UTC 2005


My advice would be to throw away any components of questionable support 
or legality and re-create their functionality from scratch. Software is 
about communication between people and between people and machines. In 
the absence of communication and legally documented rights, what you 
have is a ticking time bomb. Get rid of it *now*!

Roderick A. Anderson wrote:

> Not strickly Linux but semi-(F)OSS related.
>
> The author of some JavaScript code seems to have disappeared off the 
> face of the earth.  This is not the first time.  His domain has gone 
> south before.  The previous time a whois turned it up and a few 
> days/weeks later it turned up again at a different hosting company. 
> There are gory details but I won't bore you with them.
>
> That time I was trying to get in contact with him about some ( paying 
> ) work to add and fix functionality in the code.  Even after his 
> domain returned I could get no replys to email.
>
> This time I went looking for the online documentation and now the 
> domain doesn't even show up in a whois.  ( Much of the site is saved 
> at archive.org ).
>
> Enough background.  So I have copies of the files and want to add and 
> correct some functionality in the code and possibly release it.  Where 
> do I stand legally since it is not OSS?  All he asked is that he be 
> recognized as the author and if it was used commercially make a 
> "donation" of $5 - $30 per application it is used in ( via. PayPal ).
>
> Semi-gory details.  The code package is fValidate.  The author is 
> Peter Bailey.  The domain is peterbailey.net .
>
> Thoughts, ideas, and off list if this is too off topic.
>
>
> Rod


-- 
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

http://linuxcapacityplanning.com




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