Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Thesis work on GNU Radio

[Michael Dickens]

On Jun 27, 2006, at 9:06 AM, Robert McGwier wrote:
> If you are going to be doing this work in support of the GnuRadio  
> project,  PLEASE, go ahead and get the necessary FSF forms now and  
> learn how to put the needed boilerplate in all pieces of your  
> source code.   Your university,  department,  and/or advising  
> professor may have serious heartburn with this assignment of rights  
> to FSF and then all of your effort on our behalf might go for naught.

Daniel - I'm a Grad student at UND, doing GR work for my  
dissertation.  I haven't decided upon a specific topic yet, but there  
are a few banging around which I'm investigating.

Let me emphasize the need for gaining permission from your  
educational institution.  IME, -most- businesses (profit or non- 
profit, educational, incorporated, LLC or whatever):
* regard intellectual property (IP) generated by their  
"employees" (staff, faculty, students, employees, etc...) as owned by  
the overall "corporation" under almost all circumstances;
* have a set of policies which reflect their specific ownership  
guidelines, as well as how to ask for permission to do other than  
what's listed in the policies;
* have forms to fill out to deal with asking permission as well as  
documenting any significant IP (e.g. patents);
* require that any (C)'able IP include a (C) to the "corporation" or  
some individual inside, so-as to maintain ownership of that IP by the  
"corporation";
* require than any (C)'able IP be left behind when you leave the  
"corporation".

Most educational institutions allow for transferring (C) outside the  
"corporation", with appropriate permission, so long as the  
corporation can gain access to the (C)'d works in a manner which is  
royalty-free ... for example an open-source license such as the  
GPLv2.  The primary reason for this is to allow for others to use the  
works for their educational purposes .. which is likely directly  
listed somewhere in the institution's Policies somewhere.  Most  
traditional businesses wouldn't allow for this unless it's  
specifically required by a contract, since it allows competitors  
access to IP which could be used "against" them.

Bottom line is that you should consult with your advisor about your  
educational institution's IP Policy(ies), and likely with your local  
office of Research / Tech Transfer / IP, or whatever it is called  
there.  Only after exhausting all reasonable options should you just  
go ahead and do the FSF forms ... while it's often easier to ask for  
forgiveness than permission, when it comes to IP "they" probably have  
more lawyers than "you", if they care to use them.  Good luck! - MLD