Re: [Caml-list] The new OCaml book (Objective Caml Programming Language by Tim Rentsch)

[Stefano Zacchiroli <zack@upsilon.cc>]

[ Disclaimer: IANAL, but I've been within Debian on several copyright
  / licensing issues like this one. What I contribute below
  descends only from that---potentially limited---experience. ]

On Tue, Mar 03, 2009 at 10:59:12PM -0800, Tim Rentsch wrote:
> If Jason's current manuscript inadvertently makes use of value I
> brought to the joint manuscript, what should be done about that?

Dear Tim, reading your messages I do believe you acted in good faith.

Unfortunately though, under copyright law in most countries, your work
is a derivative of a work started by Jason, no matter how much you
contributed to it afterwords. Hence, at best (that would depend on the
amount of work you contributed in most cases), it can be considered as
a joint-work of which you both are Copyright holders.

> Legally, the manuscript Jason and I worked on is viewed as a joint
> work and we are equal co-owners, but even ignoring that, I don't
> think what I've done is inappropriate.  I'm confident that I'm
> responsible for more than half the value of TOCPL.  I was willing
> for Jason to be listed as co-author.  I've tried to make
> arrangements to pay Jason the royalties that I think he's entitled
> to.

Precisely because you two are co-owners (assuming the best-case
scenario above), it doesn't matter that you *proposed* him royalties
and co-authorship. Given that he refused, you are not allowed to go
ahead all alone.

You should have kept only the material for which you were the sole
copyright holder[*], and started from scratch with everything else.

Cheers.

[*] and you should better be able to prove that, in case Tim intends
    to push charges

-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
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