Re: Proposed: evolution (copyright assignment)

[Dan Winship <danw novell com>]

On Thu, 2004-07-22 at 07:07 -0500, James M. Cape wrote:
> Looking at the actual requirements, it appears as though copyright
> assignment is only necessary for > 5-consecutive-line changes, so even
> if aliens invade and burn down all the major cities... erm, Novell takes
> Evo proprietary at some future date, they would still have to get
> permission from every < 5-consecutive-line coder who submitted a patch
> to Evo, a daunting task in and of itself. AFAIK, only one of those
> people must say "nope" for the whole deal to be nixed, so I don't really
> see it as an issue.

IANAL, but I'm pretty sure the reason we only require copyright
assignment for largish changes is that the general legal consensus is
that it happens automatically for small changes. (In the same way that
if you proofread someone's novel for them, you don't get to claim
copyright on the sentences where you fix spelling errors.)

> The real question is whether or not copyright assignment allows for
> retroactive license changes.

The only thing that would allow us to retroactively change the license
would be a time machine.

-- Dan