Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: Cherokee Nation Posts Open Source Legisation - Invites comments from Community Members | From | Valdis.Kletnieks@vt ... | Date | Wed, 12 Jan 2005 03:49:45 -0500 |
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On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 07:03:31 GMT, christos gentsis said:
> sorry about this question but i didn't understand something in all this > "trade secret" situation... > > first: Is there any impact in GNU GPL?
I'm not a lawyer, just a sysadmin/programmer who follows this sort of stuff, but it's most likely that this will not impact GPL-licensed software, because it isn't attempting to restrict what things can be put into GPL software.
If anything, all this law *actually* does is get Cherokee law to match what current US law *already* says.
> second: does this US law means that everything could be a "trade > secret"? even something like the GUI? or a process bar? and in case > that someone will register them what is going to happens?
It's not a US law - it's a proposed Cherokee law (In the US, there exist some Indian reservations that are somewhat autonomous and able to make their own laws).
The actual text of the law as proposed is posted at http://www.gadugi.org/article.php?story=2005010611364165
The Cherokee law would apparently *ban* publishing open source that contains a trade secret, as that would be a "Willful breach or willful inducement of a breach of a duty to maintain secrecy;" and therefor a no-no.
(Logic - (1)(d)(i) says it has to be a secret, (1)(d)(ii) says you have to apply reasonable efforts to *keep* it secret. Therefore, *publishing* it would be an "improper" means under (1)(a)(iv), and thus (1)(b)(ii)(B) makes it "misappropriation"..)
The company can't even claim there is no "breach" or "improper means" because they intended to publish the source code as open source - because then it no longer meets the "subject of reasonable efforts to maintain secrecy" requirement. If you're not even trying to keep it a secret, it's not a secret.
> third: this under US law, is it applied in EU etc????
It isn't even clear that this law would apply in the US, much less in the EU.
But that's OK, because there's no real danger here, unless you were hoping to use the Cherokee law to protect secrets in code you publish as open source....
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