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

[Jon Portnoy]

On Thu, Aug 21, 2003 at 02:41:09AM -0400, Paul wrote:
> Jon Portnoy <avenj@g.o>, on Thu Aug 21, 2003 [01:46:16 AM] said:
> > On Thu, Aug 21, 2003 at 01:16:37AM -0400, Paul wrote:
>
> > > 	Maybe its my paranoia, but while I _might_ be willing
> > > to assign copyright to the FSF, Im not sure a company with
> > > a distribution deserves such trust. Witness Caldera...
> >
> > Maybe, but since we license it under the GPL, on the off chance that
> > somebody suddenly inherited all of Gentoo's intellectual property and
> > wanted to relicense it, old versions would still be under the GPL.
> >
> > >
> > > 	Once you have the GPL, you have a license. I could
> > > relicense an ebuild to, say some *BSD based thing, or some
> > > commercial spin-off if I wanted (if I still hold copyright),
> > > but that doesnt affect "Gentoo Technologies, Inc." right
> > > to use the ebuild under the GPL. It just affects their ability
> > > to completely control the 'intellectual property'.
> >
> > I'm talking about situations where a fork or some other entity wants to
> > change the license: legally speaking, they _cannot_ change the license
> > unless they're the copyright holder. If the contributor owns the
> > copyright rather than Gentoo, only the contributor can begin legal
> > proceedings against the infringing entity.
> >
>
> 	Hi;
>
> 	Im having a hard time reconciling your first paragraph
> with the second. First you point out that my rights under
> the GPL wouldn't be affected by someone aquiring Gentoos IP,
> then you claim Gentoo needs be able to protect against 'license
> changing'. Probably you mean license violation?



> 	If, say I had an ebuild in there, with my copyright
> held by me, and someone started using it in some way that
> violated my license (the GPL), then yes, I would be the one
> who would have to take legal action. At that point, I have
> choices. I could, for example, assign copyright to the FSF,
> or Gentoo. I could ignore it, etc. I couldnt (as you
> state) take away anyones ability to use it under the terms
> of the GPL.
> 	If I assign copyright to Gentoo, I have no more
> choice. Someone could aquire all their 'IP', and make all the
> ebuilds future modifications closed and proprietary.
> 	In other words, if Gentoo has the copyright, they
> have the choices about taking legal action, or inaction.
> It gives them a product they have control over. I am
> unconvinced that this is ultimately in the users benifit.
>

It's for our benefit. Otherwise, we're screwed.

Frankly, sometimes we have to do things to protect ourselves, even if 
that means that when you contribute something to us, the contributed 
piece that becomes a part of Gentoo belongs in an intellectual property 
sense to Gentoo. You'll find the same situation if you want to 
contribute code to GNU projects: copyright must be assigned to the FSF 
so they can defend themselves.

-- 
Jon Portnoy
avenj/irc.freenode.net

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