Re: Copyright assignment

[Sander Vesik <sander_traveling yahoo co uk>]

 --- Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org> wrote: 
> On Tue, 2004-08-03 at 19:05 -0400, Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > > In general, having say sign five legal letters to be able to hack on all parts
> of
> > > desktop would be rather limiting. So really, it would be nice if the general
> policy
> > > was that such assignment requirements are and contiunue to be very much
> > > unacceptable. Foundation getting its act together and offering a way to assign
> > > copyrights to itself would also help to remove problems with the single
> assignment
> > > related concern GNOME should be concewrned about, that is licencing integrity.
> 
> > > 
> > > Having a futuire written policy of "there is no copyright assignment needed or
> such
> > > will be assigned to the foundation" would be good.
> > 
> > Various companies that fund work might have different reasons to keep
> > copyright ownership over their code.  OpenOffice will likely continue
> > to require copyright assignment, so will Evolution, so will Real and as
> > a strategy to get folks to open source their technologies, I will
> > personally continue to encourage companies to open source software and
> > ask for copyright assignment as a way of keeping a bit of a leverage.
> > 
> > Not the ideal situation, but in the past it has opened the doors for
> > more free software to be available.
> > 
> > Is it a problem to sign five pieces of paper to get your code
> > contributed?  Very likely, but how many people are practically involved
> > in all of these projects in a day-to-day basis?
> 
> The translation and documentation teams come to mind.  I really have no
> idea how copyright works with respect to translations, but I do know
> that major documentation contributors hold copyrights.  Is copyright
> assignment required for documentation contributions as well?
> 

There is no general answer here. It might be documentation is a separate "package"
and doesn't, same for translations - or it might be they do. If teh module is set up
as gnome presently is, then probably "yes" to both. 

> --
> Shaun
> 


	
	
		
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