Legalese and coding? Yup, it's the open-source FOSDEM shindig FOSDEM doesn't get the ra-ra headlines or (thankfully) the "booth babes" but the conference does get networking and top technologists (and Belgian beer). I saw a couple of my tech heroes and big cheeses here a few minutes apart just before writing this, for example, and got some top advice for a specific tech issue a breath …
My ex-wife wants me to cough up a quarter of a million quid in damages for lost earnings because I released three (quite widely-used) software libraries freely under the MIT license rather than charging for them.
Her lawyer says I am liable because I deliberately did not earn money from them while we were married and thus cheated her out of her half.
Posting as anon for obvious reasons but I long for the WTF icon....
or ask for my pimp's share for every bloke she's slept with excluding me since our wedding day?
I dunno, man. Half of me thinks this is just some dodgy brief pushing his luck in an attempt to leave me with nothing at all after settlement. The other half thinks all I need is a pig-ignorant judge and this might actually happen.
Scary.
I don't think any lawyer could answer your question with that little information and I strongly urge you to talk to one in person instead of over the internet. Having said that I am not going to give you advice but a couple of questions that might help you in preparing for your appointment:
* What is your nationality, what is your wife's?
* Where and when did you marry?
* Where do you live now and where does your wife live?
* Did you conclude any prenuptials (assuming those can be enforced in the jurisdiction your marriage is under)?
* When did you create the libraries and where?
* Were you employed at the time of creating the libraries? Were you a student? Were you self-employed? Did you own your own company?
* Did you generate income and did you eventually support your wife during the creation of the libraries?
* Do you use the libraries currently in order to generate income? E.g. by dual-licensing them or by using them in your own projects?
* Do others contribute (send patches, write documentation or translations)?
* Where does the valuation from the other side come from? Is it made up? Was there some expert advice? Was that advice correct (many so called IP valuations contain mistakes, e.g. they fail to consider the necessity (and the costs) of supporting of ongoing development)?
This list is of course not exhaustive and really: *TALK TO YOUR LAWYER*.
Please don't post any answers but feel free to use the questions. One word of advice: It feels like sh*t (thankfully I am not a family law lawyer) but at some point that dark tunnel ends. Really.
I think that if you posted this on a law forum they would think you were telling a bad joke.
You aren't reading the right law forums. Start with Kevin Underhill's Lowering the Bar.
Seriously WTF but possible loss of income isn't potential loss of income. If it were possible then you could also be sued for not winning a Nobel Prize.
Seeing as how the US legal system is now as much about forcing people into out-of-court settlements just in order to get their life back (and stop paying lawyer's fees). It's quite likely that's what's going on. Wish you luck.
Her lawyer says I am liable because I deliberately did not earn money from them while we were married and thus cheated her out of her half.
Your ex is evidently implying women can't code for shit and are needy and dependent, thus demeaning all of wimminhood. Get the feminists on board for maximum Fox News effect, this will chill her lawyer out quickly.
Difficult question to answer. Which, by itself, probably is an answer. There were a lot of talks, most of which didn't actually say much that was truly new. Most of the interesting technically based ones ended up talking about stuff that looked as though they might become useful - maybe in two years time - and then only if the authors/makers were still working on it. Very few (that I attended) had anything that I could use (or even sensibly play with) today. In other words: effectively vapourware.
And then there were the "keynote" speeches. The stand out one for me was Larry Wall spending an hour talking about Tolkien and his oeuvre, using it a metaphor to spin out his announcement that perl6 version 1.0 will be ready this (as opposed to "by") Christmas. Even by the standards of the other talks that I went to, this one was particularly sparse with real facts or indeed, any other useful stuff.
But FOSDEM did give me one absolutely concrete thing: a cold.
I really wanted to go to FOSDEM, having never been. But now having done so, I probably won't go again.
It is primarily a developers conference, ie you are supposed to start helping out on that code which might be useful in twp years to ensure it is, and meet up with those people you work with on irc, and people working on similar stuff to you. Just listening to some talks and thats it is not the most productive thing, although every now and again there will be a really exciting one.
In my experience, conference presentations that include extended Tolkien metaphors are always devoid of substantive content. And that includes the ones that are about Tolkien.
(I recall one, from MLA some years ago, where a scholar of some repute explained how the Internet is like those crystal-ball doohickies the elves use. I feared for my sanity.)
I also saw photos of RMS (Richard Stallman) at large a few paces away, though I didn't get to meet him in person and buy one of his badges, alas...
I did meet him, although I didn't know who he was. He was handing out flyers and moaning about the proposed dropping of the "F" from FOSDEM. I disagreed with him and gave him his flyer back. Faced with my disagreement he said I hadn't thought very much about the issue. This is arrogant and condescending (I wrote some, and use lots of, open source software and couldn't give a toss whether it's Free with a capital F). But fair play to him for trying to get his opinion heard – that's free speech, something which I am very much in favour of.
I have met RMS and - while he knows his stuff - I was forced to categorise him as an individual under "Bellend". Serious people-issues in there somewhere.
Great to listen to his lectures. Bloody difficult to ask him a question though unless it's under ~5 words though (although I understand that's partially to do with US culture or some such.) Happily I wasn't looking after him while he was in the area...
RMS is noted for having invented a number of novel approaches to arrogance and condescension. It's one of his research fields.
Not that I don't admire it, mind you, as one practitioner to another.
(His "free software" crusade on the other hand I've never found compelling. Oh well.)
Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't the US of A was founded by a bunch of lawyers, primarily to create an environment where they could pursue their desire to HAPPILY suing bodies free from taxes / stamp duties and any interfering parliament? So why are you then surprised that a patent office created by said lawyers appears to award endless questionable patents that will only create more work and revenue for the descendents of those founding lawyers?
I'm just surprised there's anyone left in the US of A who hasn't chosen law as their profession (or possibly accountancy given the tax code), especially seeing the number of basic formula still being awarded patents is astounding. Started to play a game at Xmas, take a 1980's Computer Science textbook and Google for any US software patents awarded in the last 10 years for the formula published in the book. Gave up after getting depressed on finding 17 patents awarded this century for implementations of the Adolphe Quetelet 1830's based BMI formula, there are even a couple awarded in 2007 for methods of calculating said formula using a slide rule, let alone the variations for calculating a value using one of those computery things.
"There were 300,000 US patents issued last year – a worryingly high allowance rate"
That works out at one per thousand Americans. Hardly excessive. Not to forget that a significant proportion of those were from overseas companies (e.g. Europe / Japan).
Finally, that's for all forms of technology, from paint formulae to photosensor discharge strategies and everything inbetween - a lot of these patents are incredibly specific, you know...
And why have patents? As the saying goes, the first Viagra pill cost £100,000,000 to make; the second 20p. If anyone could step in at that point to make them on the cheap, the original inventors would collapse.To get a return on investment in research, and hence *any* investment in the first place, there *has* to be a way to ensure the person who makes the first pill is entitled to exclusively make the second one, too.
The same applies to any return on research investment.
/My 2penn'orth
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