Subject: Order of events
Resent-Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 21:08:24 CST
Resent-From: "Bill Couch" <BILLC@osage.astate.edu>
Resent-To: bcouch@insolwwb.net
Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 15:16:02 -0800
From: Jeff Murphy <kybiog@starbase21.com>
This is to confirm our telephone conversation of today, herein you asked me to describe the history of events in the creation of your Arkansas home page.
In April, 1996, the KYGenWeb Project began recruiting for people to take over county pages. In order to help in the creation of county pages, I developed a standardized format for that project.
Sometime during the period April to June, with my complete permission, you took a copy of my Kentucky state page and made one for the state of Arkansas. This was done prior to the creation of the USGenWeb Project, and in fact was part of the reason we decided to go ahead with the USGenWeb Project.
In June, 1996, you and I talked about taking this idea one step further and creating the USGenWeb Project. After you decided not to organize it yourself, I went ahead and created the U.S. page, with Kentucky and Arkansas as the first two states listed.
As one of the first orders of business, I created a sample state page for those in the project to use as a sort of template. Any claims by others that they created the state sample page are false. Any claims by others that you stole the format for your page from their sample page are false.
As the project developed in June and July, there was a group of individuals who wanted to include more in the project than I did. As project creator and project coordinator, I should have kicked them out of the project at the time, but made the mistake of allowing them to continue to voice their objections. The details of this coup have been discussed elsewhere. Suffice it to say that I resigned from the project at the end of July.
Laying a pattern for the future, the junta took my state page, cloned it, and without compensating me for all my work in any way took my intellectual property as if it were their own. This seems to be pretty much what they have done to you.
You have from the beginning had the freely-given right to use the format of the state page which I developed. Any claims to the contrary are totally false and malicious.
You may freely distribute this message to any concerned parties.
Jeff Murphy 735 NW 8th Redmond, Oregon 97756 h. (541) 548-4478
-121 10' 31", 44 16' 57"
http://www.teleport.com/~jmurphy/ Muhlenberg Co., KY genealogy
http://www.starbase21.com/kybiog/ KY Biographies Project