There is an odd way with how our campus handles possession of our intellectual property. It varies from department to department, and there is quite a bit of confusion regarding possession after one graduates. I had a lengthy discussion with Dan when driving back from San Jose a few days ago (looking at shiny Apple computers). At least between the computer science and video production majors, there appears to be some disparity over what happens to your work when you leave the school. After reviewing the lab policies and capstone requirements, here is an overall synopsis of what we could determine.
The first and most important thing is that CSUMB revolves around Outcome Based Education. As a direct result, for your final project, you must create something. It varies from a paper to a multimedia presentation, but the end result is still a complete product. The university requests a copy of the completed work to be submitted in your final academic portfolio, and if you have a copy, you get to keep your product. However, this is where things get very confusing.
Anything produced on university computers can not be used for commercial purposes. This is a restriction placed by the software used, often under an educational license. This could potentially be subject to interpretation, as a university computer using a free FTP client to transfer a file would not incur these restrictions.
For the Teledramatic Arts and Technology capstones, if any TAT equipment was used in the production process, a note must be added in the credits along the lines of "Produced at the studio of Teledramatic Arts and Technology, 2004." This restriction does not apply to the computer science capstones, even though they are technical developed under similar hardware-level terms.
Capstone advisors do not check licensing requirements for capstones period. My capstone, a project manager application for XOOPS (a content management system) is licensed under the GNU Public License (GPL). Salvador put his OS X program Due Dates under the LGPL and placed it on SourceForge. Someone could have put their TAT capstone under the Creative Commons license and nobody would have said anything.
But then, what happens here, in the real world. Can the GPL protect your software by letting you "fork" it beyond what was submitted (and in possession by) the university? Can a Creative Commons License allow you to use your work in a commercial venture if you get the rights from yourself? Does the university have to abide by the GPL if they develop your product and do they have to pay to use your CC protected work if you put it out under "Non-Commercial" license?
It's all so confusing, and there is no easy place to start short of asking the people involved in large university projects, people well involved with the GPL and the CC licenses, and see what they say. It's always been a common assumption that the University "owned" your work unless they released it to you, forgoing all rights to it. Is that still the case, and does letting you license your product / film / essay entitle you to the rights you not only need to protect your work outside of your institution, but allow you to use it in the context of the real world.
In response to "Capstones, the Creative Commons, and the GPL":
@_@ wauuugh, it’s confusing just reading about it! But I get the general feeling that the students are screwed.