Re: Another job for the Gnome Foundation ?

[Brian Behlendorf <brian collab net>]

On Mon, 21 Aug 2000 kelly@poverty.bloomington.in.us wrote:
> If I write a short story and grant a license to a publisher to
> include it in an anthology, I can subsequently sue someone who
> republishes it.  The publisher can also sue if the publisher can show
> that the republication was derived from the anthology publication, but
> I do not have to make such a showing.

Well then it definitely sounds like the *collection* can be defended in a
copyright suit by the Foundation even if it's composed of contributions
given under the terms of non-exclusive licenses.  However it still needs a
license to redistribute in the first place, so it can actually defend it.

Jim, your concern is about *exclusive* assignment, is it not?  On that
basis, I'd agree, and am surprised that the FSF required it.

Kelly you bring up a lot of other interesting points, showing that the
current law doesn't really know how to deal with such a composite IP
environment very gracefully.  To me, this is a good reason to have the
developers explicitly sign a non-exclusive grant to the foundation for
their code: it avoids the possibility that the Foundation wake up one day
and finds the code base in a legal quagmire because it needs something
from older developers who are no longer reachable or friendly.

	Brian