[ntp:questions] Copyright Ownership

David L. Mills mills at udel.edu
Sun Jun 15 18:27:08 UTC 2008


David,

I have anticipated a battle over my carcass and hired expensive estaqte 
and portfolio managers. They will take care of the issues you raise. 
However, I find your comments in extremely poor taste.

Dave

David Woolley wrote:

> David L. Mills wrote:
> [ In relationship to the ntpd code ]
> 
>> *                                                                     *
>> * Copyright (c) David L. Mills 1992-2008                              *
> 
> 
> If this is actually correct (i.e. it isn't a work for hire actually 
> owned by the University of Delaware), it would be highly advisable to 
> think about transferring ownership to a trust, or similar.
> 
> If Wikipedia is correct, David Mills has reached his three score years 
> and ten.  When he dies, copyright ownership will be part of his estate, 
> and unless his will donates that ownership to an appropriate trust, 
> etc., or someone who shares his passion for NTP, you may be left with a 
> situation where the licence terms are frozen for 70 years and cannot be 
> modified to account for subsequent changes in case or statute law.  (I 
> don't know if Delaware has any form of inheritance tax, but if it does, 
> it is conceivable that the intellectual property might be considered to 
> have monetary value and be taxable.  There is little precedent, as there 
> are very few 70 year old authors of major pieces of open source software 
> that still own the copyright.)
> 
> Even more of a danger is that he might become legally "incapable" before 
> he dies.  Without some appropriate legal protection, that could leave 
> things in limbo for many years.
> 
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=David_L._Mills&oldid=203351661>.




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