Centre/SIS GPL violated by The Miller Group

[Andrew Schmadeke]

Ah ... I failed to mention that I did not sign any contract with The  
Miller Group.

We had a verbal agreement that I would receive a percentage  
commission of all support services sold, but nothing further.  Of  
course, I'm not receiving commission checks any longer.

I have consulted a lawyer who agrees I own the copyright.  The only  
problem is that he says it would be expensive to enforce it.
--Andrew


On Mar 16, 2006, at 12:19 PM, Ed Wilts wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 13, 2006 at 07:39:00PM -0500, Andrew Schmadeke wrote:
>> I am the author of Centre/SIS which is released under the GPL
>> license.  This has been distributed through a company I use to
>> consult for until December as well as freshmeat and  
>> versiontracker, etc.
>>
>> This company is called The Miller Group (www.miller-group.net).  I
>> wrote the software as an independent contractor, and therefore own
>> the copyright.
>
> The "therefore own the copyright" doesn't follow.  Just because you're
> an independent contractor does not mean that you own the  
> copyright.  The
> laws vary from one place to another and it also depends on what was in
> your contract.  It's quite possible that you do not own the copyrights
> at all.
>
>> Shortly after I stopped consulting for The Miller Group, they began
>> to try to sell a commercial license for Centre to another company.
>>
>> I contacted The Miller Group telling them not to do this, and
>> explaining the violation. The Miller Group has not responded to this
>> letter.  Instead, they removed the copyright notices that contained
>> my name from the source code, and republished the software (under the
>> same version name).  This new copy of version 2.5 also contained a
>> new file called copyright that says:
>>
>> /**
>> * @version $Id: index.php,v 2.5 2005
>> * @package Centre
>> * @copyright (C) 2000 - 2005 The Miller Grouop
>> * @license http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html GNU/GPL
>> * Centre is Free Software
>> */
>>
>> The Miller Group is also selling add-on modules which I wrote, but
>> never distributed.
>
> Again, they may own the copyrights to these modules and may be  
> perfectly
> within their rights to sell these modules.
>
>> I'm just a college student, and my lawyer tells me it would cost
>> between $10,000 and $20,000 to get an injunction.  What can I do?
>
> First, do you have proof that you own the copyrights?  If not, you're
> dead before you go any farther.  Did your contract state that you  
> get to
> keep the copyrights to all code that you developed for them?
>
>         .../Ed
> -- 
> Ed Wilts, RHCE
> Mounds View, MN, USA
> mailto:ewilts at ewilts.org
> Member #1, Red Hat Community Ambassador Program