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I appear to fall in a grey area | 79 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
I appear to fall in a grey area
Authored by: hAckz0r on Tuesday, August 21 2012 @ 10:31 AM EDT
In the other hand you gave a gift to the same organization, not the reverse. Your professional time is worth something, and if you volunteered then you gave a gift of your time * your normal compensation rate. How exactly do your see that as you being paid to you? If Google's money did not pay you directly for your personal expenses (e.g. air fare, hotel stay, food that only mentors not coders received, etc) then you should have little to worry about. Having the privilege to donate your time and talent has many personal rewards, but those rewards can not even be quantified or enumerated, as they exist only within you.

Kudos for your help as a mentor! There, I just paid you too! Fortunately I am not a party to the current litigation so you can enjoy that statement made in public and blog about it all you want. ;)

---
The Investors IP Law: The future health of a Corporation is measured as the inverse of the number of IP lawsuits they are currently litigating.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

I appear to fall in a grey area
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, August 21 2012 @ 10:32 AM EDT

Your latter paragraph is, perhaps, easier to answer. We saw in SCO how blogs and articles got into evidence and appeals, so Judge Alsup is asking the parties to put a big mark on the items out there that might have been influenced by their largesse, even innocently or indirectly, without insisting on the impossible.

As to your first key question, I'd say that if your comments, like mine, were found in talk backs and replies, i.e., not in the main article, no worries. I am a java programmer and so I use resources provided to me for free by Oracle. I use Google for my searches. (Well, now that by extension, Google suggests I infringe the patents they bought from Motorola because my Macs have wi-fi, maybe I should rethink that.) So, prior to yesterday, I have reason for both companies to do well. But I don't write any thing with a by-line, so I consider the odds to be very close to zero that my words have influenced the world. Shoot, I look at the replies and I don't think I convince any one. If you weren't commenting on the trial via a blog and url that you control, I think the way Google has benefited you (and us) via the Summer of Code doesn't rise to the level of what the Judge requested. That said, an email to Google identifying yourself and posting ids wouldn't hurt: it may mean that Google shows good faith and openness because people like you volunteer what would otherwise be a difficult connection to establish.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

I appear to fall in a grey area
Authored by: PJ on Tuesday, August 21 2012 @ 11:42 AM EDT
The judge doesn't care about your comments
here. He seems to be looking for some equivalent
to Florian Mueller and also for any lawyers
who may have written scholarly articles that
the court might have been influenced by.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Forget the grey area, read the grey print
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, August 21 2012 @ 04:02 PM EDT
Somewhere in the Deed of Gift* when Google gave the money
to your organisation there should be a paragraph or two dissociating
Google from anything you or your organisation might say or do
at some future time.

* I'm certain there will be a document of that form somewhere,
Google likes to stay onside with IRS, SEC, &c. They're not like
we suspect certain other parties who'll just slip a wad of notes
out of an inside pocket.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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