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Unread 19-04-2012, 16:19
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Tristan Lall Tristan Lall is offline
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Re: TI and future Jaguars

Quote:
Originally Posted by techhelpbb View Post
This is a public domain idea so hopefully if anyone is thinking about a trip down to a patent office someone will bother to look at this because it now belongs to everyone and anyone.

The only money that might be possible to make of this for a private business (outside of manufacturing it directly) would be to make a private module that does something the community doesn't have a module for. Then they've contributed to an open source project and let this serve as notice they will be required to disclose the use of the collective community work as part of their dealings.

Community in this case defined as anyone and everyone bundled into this project regardless of where it may communicate including Google Cache, TheWayBackMachine and these domains I bought in case we want them:

EMCPROJECT.COM
EMCPROJECT.NET
EMCPROJECT.ORG

EMCTURF.COM
EMCTURF.NET
EMCTURF.ORG

OPENEMC.COM
OPENEMC.NET
OPENEMC.ORG

I registered the alternate TLD (the last 3 letters) to prevent domain squatting.

Whether or not all the ideas I've presented I have an exclusivity on is unclear to me currently. However, I am considering my ideas openly donated this this particular project and the community involved with it.

Consider yourselves at the minimum GPLed .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_hardware
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License

Anyone with an objection to that particular license or whatever else about what I wrote in this post make it known please (let's not have some lurker suddenly selling this thing next month with a manual full of quotes from this topic then screaming we can't make them because they did first).
These notices probably won't be effective. American courts recognize the validity of terms of use imposed by a website upon its users, but are unlikely to give much weight to a third party (e.g. you) imposing terms. (In other words, posting this notice here probably won't hurt you, but neither will it help much. It might have an adverse effect if you imply something here that is contradicted by terms found elsewhere, and someone argues that they relied on your statements here.)

In patent terms, your declaration that this "now belongs to everyone and anyone" is pretty much ineffective. If someone takes what's been discussed here, adds something novel to it, and patents it, your declaration doesn't do any good. And if they don't add anything, then this thread represents prior art, and their claim is defeatable, declaration or not. You can't bind someone else with a unilateral declaration.

Similarly with copyright, you can't tell people that the GPL applies to what they publish on ChiefDelphi. All posts on ChiefDelphi should be assumed to be copyrighted by their authors.1 You may be able to assert fair use or some other prerogative, but that depends on the circumstances of what you plan to do with it. Certainly don't expect that you could incorporate others' posts into the documentation that you distribute with the product. If you want to bind people to some licence, you have to have an agreement with them. It's not your forum, so you can't impose terms of use on the users.

1 It's possible for a post to be ineligible for copyright, but that's rare with any substantial content.
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