Re: GCJ FAQ 2.4

[Per Bothner <per at bothner dot com>]

Kurt Mahan <kmahan@xmission.com> writes:

> So now I no longer work for them.  I haven't for a couple of years.  Am I
> contaminated till the end of time?  Have any of the open source/cleanroom
> projects pinned down EXACTLY what they mean?  Have they worked with Sun to
> make sure that the people that have/are contributing never signed ANY of
> the source download licenses?  Not even the 0.96 stuff?

The problem is there are no hard-and-fast rules.  For example,
there is no *legal* requirement for a cleanroom process.
The point of a cleanroom process is to avoid gray areas,
and preferably even the *appearance* of *possible* illegal copying.

Some things are  clearly legally ok but the concern is related
to appearance (i.e. if you get pulled into court). An example is
if you are familar with some part of Sun's code (such as
the VM), and then want to work on something unrelated
(like awt, swing, ejb).  The further away, the safer you are.

Time is also an issue.  I think there may be an analogy with
non-compete clauses in employment contracts.  The consensus seems to
be that they are enforceable if they are limited to a reasonable time
period, and not if they are open-ended.  Thus a six-month non-compete
clause might be enforceable, but a two-year clause probably won't be.
(Digressions: This depends on the view of the court on things like how
well you were compensated in exchange.  The enforcebility is less for
a regular programmer with a normal pay-check and with very specific
skills than it would be for an executive who got a multi-million
dollar severance bonus, for example.)

By analogy, if you worked on or studied Sun's code six months ago
before working on a competing employer or open-source project,
you might be in trouble.  However, if it has been two years since
you looked at the code, and you didn't keep any notes, then it
might be ok.  However, if there were trade secrets involved (like
a really clever, non-obvious, unpublished algorithm) then you probably
still can't use those trade secrets.

This is all very unclear, of course.  Even a lawyer (which I'm clearly
not) can't give you a hard answer.  So it's up to the various project
to set policies they think make sense.  For Gcj and most other
projects, the goal is better safe than sorry without being paranoid.
Anything more specific, I can't say, as it is not my place to set Gcj
policy.  (That should come from a combination of the FSF and RedHat,
after consultation with their lawyers.)
-- 
	--Per Bothner
per@bothner.com   http://www.bothner.com/~per/