closed-source bounties (was Re: [Asterisk-Dev] US$200 bounty for * paging feature)

[Steven]

On Tue, 2005-04-19 at 18:20 -0700, Kevin P. Fleming wrote:
> Andrew Kohlsmith wrote:
> 
> > Are you sure about that?  If I'm hired as a contract for Company Foo, I am 
> > certainly not distributing the code that I write for them to them; I am in 
> > their employ and as such I am pretty sure that this is allowed.
> 
> That is certainly correct. Any development work that you do as a work 
> "for hire" against a GPL source base is owned by the entity that paid 
> you for the work. It is their responsibility to live up to any GPL 
> requirements, not yours. Providing the code that you wrote to them under 
> contract does not qualify as "distributing" it, any more than it would 
> if you were directly in their employ and working in their facilities.

Are you sure a bounty is considered "work for hire"? I think the lack of
guarantee would be a problem. Specifically that there is no contract
before the fact. I may be stretching here, but I think a bounty
shouldn't be the same as work for hire.

Either way around, it is a bad idea to take up closed source
contributions to a GPL product. Especially if the rumors are true about
the next revision of the GPL going to remove the loophole regarding
distribution.
-- 
Steven <critch at basesys.com>