Re: [gentoo-dev] Why should copyright assignment be a requirement?

[Jon Portnoy]

On Thu, Aug 21, 2003 at 10:58:19AM +0200, Sven Vermeulen wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 21, 2003 at 12:17:23AM -0400, Jon Portnoy wrote:
> > With regards to copyrights, it's necessary for us to own copyright on
> > ebuilds in order to defend our intellectual property. If we (Gentoo
> > Technologies) don't own copyright on ebuilds (and other pieces of
> > Gentoo), we have no legal leg to stand on if someone (for example)
> > attempts to put a more restrictive license on that piece of intellectual
> > property.
>
> If the object in question (here, the ebuild) is licensed under GPL (not the
> program it refers to, but the ebuild itself) then even the copyrightholder
> can't force Gentoo to stop spreading the object since the license is still
> valid.

That's not the point; the point is that it allows us to defend our 
intellectual property if someone else tries to infringe upon it; e.g., 
changing the license.

>
> I'm not sure though that ebuilds are under any sort of license.
>

They're licensed under the GPL. Whether that's enforcable in court or 
not is another matter.


-- 
Jon Portnoy
avenj/irc.freenode.net

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