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I'm guessing that GMU-paid people wrote the code in question—they have quite a team now. But it would an interesting legal question if outside people had done it as part of the Open Source process and GMU had merely agreed to include the code. Tim On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 10:50 AM, Peter Murray <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > On Sep 29, 2008, at 10:19 AM, Jonathan Rochkind wrote: >> >> But there's nothing illegal about reverse engineering it. Unless perhaps >> you've signed a contract saying you wouldn't (did George Mason? Perhaps, if >> they have an EndNote license). > > Initially, I agreed. But it appears that George Mason did sign a site-wide > license agreement (see the paragraph labeled #12 at > http://dltj.org/article/zotero-lawsuit-extracts/ ), and the license > agreement explicitly prohibits reverse engineering (paragraph labeled #15). > To the best of my layman's understanding of the legal system, contract law > (the license agreement) trumps copyright and patent law. > >> I hope George Mason U is willing to stand up for Zotero. It's popular >> enough that hopefully they will. > > They /may/ be. Paragraph #31 says that GMU referred the matter to outside > counsel. I suppose we just need to watch and wait to see what happens. > > > Peter > - -- > Peter Murray http://www.pandc.org/peter/work/ > Assistant Director, New Service Development tel:+1-614-728-3600;ext=338 > OhioLINK: the Ohio Library and Information Network Columbus, Ohio > The Disruptive Library Technology Jester http://dltj.org/ > Attrib-Noncomm-Share http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/