[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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