User talk:Barberio/Archive 2

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Image copyright tags

Jon Postel was never an employee of the DoD. He worked for the University of Southern California. The exact copyright status of anything he produced would depend on details of the contract between DARPA and USC. I don't know those details, but I can tell you (from experience at MIT) that it was quite common for such material not to be in the public domain. Hence your modification to the copyright tag was completely inappropriate. (And anyway, you shouldn't be changing the copyright status tag on an image someone else uploaded, an image you don't have a clue about the copyright status of.) Please stop meddling with things which you don't have knowledge of. Noel (talk) 07:50, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Anyone who received ARPA/DARPA research grants was a DoD employee for the period of research, and in respect to the products of the research. --John R. Barberio ^{talk, contribs} 10:17, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

This is incorrect. If you think otherwise, please cite a source which says so.

BTW, everyone at University College London, which received such grants, will be rather surprised to hear that they were "DoD employees". Actually, that's not such a bad idea. There's a link to Peter Kirstein's home page on the page I did for him, and his email address is there. Why don't you send him email, asking him if he was a DoD employee - he got such grants. Noel (talk) 14:48, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Accepting a DOD grant ties you to legal obligations to the DOD to provide them with research, such as a requirment to disclose any patentable invention created during the research, and a requirment to grant licence to any research product, and disclosure of patentable items as with any employed contractor. (See University and Small Business Patent Procedures Act) The DOD may also take a contractual aquisition order if the reseach is directed to the creation of item or items to further the goals of the US. (See DoDGARS) It would be perfectly resionable use of language to say 'Dr. X was employed in a research project to the DOD'. Products of ARPANET research are thus products of someone Employed by the DOD. --John R. Barberio ^{talk, contribs} 15:48, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

I am reasonably aware of US Govt procurement regulations (although not in detail, and also you're probably looking at the current regs, not the circa-'82 regs which would apply), which is why I said on the image page that it was 'probably publicly available' (or words to that effect). (Also, note that those terms say the work product has to be made available to the government for free - it says nothing of making them available to private individuals. IIRC, the terms do differ between patents, and other intellectual property, such as documents, though; the latter are often required to be made publicly available.) However, without knowing the exact circumstances in which it was created (e.g., maybe Jon did it in his spare time, not during paid work hours - and we'll never know now, as Jon is gone), and the exact details of the contract (you can get waivers from those terms), it is not certain.

That's a diffent point from the employment issue, though: legally (i.e. not in colloquial or informal terms) Jon, Peter and I all worked for private organizations (in various countries) which had a contractual relationship with the US government. I.e. we were all no more "government employees" than someone working for any company which has a contractual relationship with a government to supply any given service or product. Joe Bloggs who works for British Leyland (do they still exist?) is not a "government employee" because he's making trucks that the MoD has contracted for.

It does make a big difference exactly who one does legally work for when it comes to these legal issues; e.g. as an MIT employee, I received a share of royalty income from patents filed by MIT on things that were created in the course of doing government-funded research. Such would not have been the case for government employees (except in very unusual circumstances, such as the grants to various people such as Watson-Watt, Whittle, Turing etc by the Royal Commission after WWII). Noel (talk) 18:12, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

PS: I don't normally watch other people's talk pages, and I just happened to see your reply above by accident. To make sure I see something, you need to put it on my talk page. Thanks. Noel (talk) 18:12, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Congress categories comment

Just a note to call something to your attention:

Wikipedia:Categories for deletion has an unresolved (tied?) question about Category names for U.S. Congress members. I'd welcome your thought or input to help break the tie. Use your own judgement, but please vote... Thanks, Lou I 20:50, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

History of the Internet

Tell you what, why don't you back off editing it until you've read all the major histories, and also studied the history of networking, and don't keep making all sorts of beginner's mistakes (like thinking the '82 map shows the MILNET - which didn't even exist in '82). Noel (talk) 00:08, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

I haven't done any editing on the article yet because i) I have other things I'm working on, ii) it seems more productive to hash this stuff out on the talk: page before doing do (which is the recommended Wikipedia way of dealing with contentious issues). I plain on doing a major reorganization later tonight. Noel (talk) 01:24, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Hello

Yup, I think half the Internet-using population is here these days, though I don't know many of their nicks... --Calair 00:40, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

History of the Internet

I protected at Noel's request. I don't think protecting an article escalates conflict. It forces everyone to take a deep breath and explain what they're thinking, rather than just reverting back and forth. If you want to start arguing, instead, about whose fault the protection is, go ahead, but that doesn't seem terribly productive to me. john k 19:45, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

I reverted to the last pre-dispute version, which is allowed. john k 21:06, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, you are correct. I'm sorry about that. I am now reverting to the actual pre-dispute version. john k 23:55, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

History of the Internet

I take it that's a vote for rewrite? --John R. Barberio ^{talk, contribs} 20:10, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Nope, that's a vote for "voting is bad, let's discuss things." --fvw* 20:12, 16 September 2005 (UTC)