Re: [gentoo-trustees] copyright transfer agreement

[Sven Vermeulen]

On Tue, Apr 12, 2005 at 12:19:44PM -0700, Deedra Waters wrote:
> So, what do the rest of you want?We need to come up with a decision of
> what we want first before we can even get down to deciding in how we
> want to do the copyright doc, if we want one.
> So, do you guys want one or not? Do you want gentoo's software to be
> protected or not?

Don't dare to go away from the original intend to get copyright transfers.
There are only positive sides attached to it afaik, you just need to be able
to sensiblize (sp?) the developers for it.

A copyright transfer is a contract. If the Gentoo Foundation requires all
developers to sign a contract stating that every work they contribute to
the Gentoo Project is owned by Gentoo Foundation as long as the Gentoo
Foundation does not wave from the GPL license version 2 or higher for
software or the Creative Commons - Attribution / Share Alike version 2 or
higher for the work, then that's a valid contract (okay, there are some
smaller items that need to be listed in the contract for it to be valid in
Belgium, but it's really not difficult), then developers should not worry
about Gentoo Foundation walking away with their code.

Perhaps the developer wants to share the copyright of the Work with the
Gentoo Foundation in such an extend that the Gentoo Foundation can
individually act on the Work as long as the Gentoo Foundation does not wave
from the beforementioned licenses that's possible as well and fits our needs
(we just want to be able to protect Gentoo). I believe we should keep that
option open as well.

Deedra, has this been mentioned during the previous conference call? Sharing
ownership on works but on which each side can individually act (without the
permission of the other side) and where the Gentoo ownership stays as long
as we do not wave from the GPL/CC-BY-SA?

Wkr,
      Sven Vermeulen

-- 
  Documentation project leader

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