Re: Cherokee Nation Posts Open Source Legisation - Invites comments from Community Members

[root <root@mail.gadugi.org>]

On Thu, Jan 06, 2005 at 01:36:46PM -0500, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
> On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 12:04:14 CST, root said:
> 
> > This legislation Will be voted on in the Rules Committee Jan 17 and will be presented for 
> > ratification to the Full Tribal Council on February 14, 2005. This legislation is designed 
> > to protect trade secrets for both open source development and general public licensing 
> > schemes as well as proprietary technology developed in the commerical sector.
> 
> I fail to see how you can *possibly* have "trade secret" rights in open source
> software.  At least not in any way interoperable with any other country's usage
> of the term "trade secret".
> 
> It's one thing to be smoking a peace pipe. Totally another to be smoking a
> crack pipe.
> 
> 



It's based on the design of the license.  Under Cherokee Nation Law, you
can have and claim trade secrets in public code released under a public
license.  This makes it very easy for individual contributors to 
enforce their rights in the US.  We spent months researching this, and yes,
it holds up under our laws.