Hi,

My question regards intellectual property rights and ownership. I am
developing a technology for creating and indexing documents and
knowledge materials. Ultimately, the outcome of this will be an XML
type mark-up language that will be used for adding meta-data to
textual documents.

I am intending to release that technology as an open source but I
still want my name to be related to it, no matter who uses it or where
it has been implemented. I would like to make sure that there would
not be someone else who would claim that they have invented it.

There are a lot of open source technologies and solutions that are
being developed by communities but most of the time there are certain
people or organisations that stand behind the initial idea or
creation.

Could you please tell me what are the ways to achieve this? Thank you
for your consideration.

Regards
Ivan

Hello ivan,

I went to the web site for the Free Software Foundation and located a
listing of the various free public licenses.  The FSF is the
originator of the GNU General Public License and the copyright holder
for all GNU GPL programs.  The GNU GPL allows for the free
distribution and modification of software published under it.  As
copyright holder, FSF is responsible for the defense of that
copyright.

There are other free software licenses and FSF has a list of them with
a brief review of the compatibility with the GNU GPL as well as if the
license qualifies under the principal of copy left and is a free
software license.  The FSF will be more then happy to assist you in
choosing a viable license for your software project.

Free Software Foundation homepage
http://www.fsf.org

GNU General Public License
http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl.html

List of free software licenses
http://www.fsf.org/licenses/license-list.html

markoft

Hi Ivan and Markoft,

I just want to add this little bit -- in case it wasn't clear -- you
can be the copyright holder of a program AND license it under the GPL.
The GPL+your copyright, when put together, mean people can't 1) claim
your software as their own, nor 2) modify your source code to put in
another program which is then re-distributed sans source code.

I think some issues here border on legal advice, so you should verify
our responses with a lawyer when the final decision time comes.

Sincerely,
CJS