Re: Copyright assignment

[Miguel de Icaza <miguel ximian com>]

Hello,

> > I've a simple question about copyright assignment (to Novell, or to the
> > GNOME Foundation, it doesn't matter for this question): will it be valid
> > in all countries or is it just valid in the US?
> 
> As far as I know, for example the Finnish law (which applies to me)
> doesn't recognize such thing as copyright assignment. Here the creator
> of a piece of work has the copyright until 50 years (time varies
> depending of type of work) has passed from his death. 
> 
> However, the copyright owner may give additional rights to use, copy and
> modify the piece of work to someone else. This however doesn't remove
> the creator's own rights to do whatever he likes with the work. 

Probably calling it `copyright assignment form' is the wrong term;  it
just happens to be what everyone else calls it.

The document is a contract in which you grant permission to Novell to
reuse your creation (you own the copyright to it) to be distributed
under any terms that Novell wishes to in addition to the GPL version.

The details are on the contract.