was criminal use of linux [not] -now: ownership

[Roger]

Er... nobody can take ownership over work that you have written, Your 
work is your own, regardless of whether they own the language you write 
it in or not. Where is it stated that Micros[hi]t owns C++? when did 
this happen? You can't own something in the free domain? This is like 
saying that I own English and you can't use it unless I say so - it's 
stupid and ridiculous.

Indeed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B C++ has nothing to do with 
Microsoft. Even in C#, which they developed and where they own key 
components of the run-time, code you write belongs to you (though 
licensing of compiled binaries can be interesting depending on your 
compiler license - in exactly the same way some people call GPL 
infectious).


Thanks Richard.
I did see something about Microsoft owning or making a claim on 
ownership C++ in the avaaz at avaaz.org site who were raising awareness of 
the group of corporate nasties trying  to change US political thinking. 
They had something like 200,000 responses to that event, but I do not 
know the results.
http://www.avaaz.org/en/highlights.php , a like group trying to get 
support for absolute web control. This is the second such attempt I've 
seen. I gave support to the first.

If I can find it all again I'll post the url. I too thought it was 
stupid and didn't take much notice when I read it but it made me think, 
at the time, what if they own if, case, while and do, etc. This is why I 
remembered the article.

Ad for ownership, I think it depends on circumstances. I have heard 
instances of when one writes a work while employed by or under contract 
to a company then they do not own their work, the company does, even if 
the work was done on unpaid holidays or at home during unpaid after hours.

If, say a programmer or developer is employed by a company or 
organisation and they write code and say develop a site in their own 
time, using open source applications, and contribute the whole thing to 
Open source or under GPL, etc, can the company/organisation stake a claim?

Also, if a programmer writes code snippets and contributes snippets to a 
larger unit, for instance, a kernel or app. From the above comment, he 
still owns the code snippet.
If a vast number of snippets from a vast number of coders are donated 
free of encumbrance to enhance a kernel or app, how does that make the 
whole (Linux) responsible for copyright violation when no one entity 
owns it?

I'm probably waffling on here but it seems that there's more going on 
under the carpet than we may be aware of with MS. Mentioning over 200 
instances yet I see no one discussing or displaying code comparisons to 
show that it is true. Surely it is incumbent on the complaintant to 
provide proof.
Roger
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