Rekall not longer available from theKompany.com - a fabrication

[GrayGeek]

Todd Stephens wrote:

> On Sat, 01 Nov 2003 05:57:46 -0500, Alex Martelli wrote:
> 
>> I do sometimes get asked for advice about "an Access-like product that's
>> cross-platform" and the like, but I couldn't in good faith suggest
>> Rekall if I thought that could potentially send the purchaser into the
>> midst of a legal controversy.  Sigh.
>  
> I don't see much controversy here.  If the work was done for theKompany,
> then it is a work made for hire, no?  In that case, theKompany owns the
> rights to the software.
> 

That depends upon the contract, if any, which was signed.   I ran my own
consulting business for 18 years and part of my contract boiler plates
handled situations about code ownership.   The algorithms and knowledge I
possessed before a contract were not transfered to the client.  They owned
the product I delivered to them, including the source, but they agreed they
wouldn't use it to compete against me, as an early client tried to do.  Any
proprietary knowledge about their business I learned while writing their
software remained theirs.  Any knowledge I acquired which was independent
of their area remained with me...etc....   If course, my working rules also
followed the 20 IRS rules for independent contractors.   

If John Dean was an independent contractor, and the URL I cited in a
previous posting, which is a comment by Shawn Gordon himself, seemed to
imply such, ("a team of people I've never physically met." ...  "to the
extent you can be friends with people you've never met and have never
talked to on the phone.") then I get the impression that Gordon was a
marketeer, a person selling code 'on consignment' and that he had a
'friendly' relationship, not a contractual one, with several coders around
the world.  John Dean may have happened to be one who lives in the US.

I'm sure we'll find out more as the days pass by.  Probably someone will
post pertinent sections of a contract, or examples of prior art, etc... 
Meanwhile,  ReKall appears to be in some sort of limbo for those putative
customers who don't want to be left stranded by legal wrangles.  Gordon
legal power may be effective here, but not at other locations around the
globe where other contributors to theKompany code base live.
???
-- 

-
GrayGeek