Re: Proposed: evolution (copyright assignment)

[JP Rosevear <jpr novell com>]

On Thu, 2004-07-22 at 07:07 -0500, James M. Cape wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-07-22 at 11:39 -0600, Ryan McDougall wrote:
> > IMO copyright assignment is a good idea when its assigned to a
> > organization with a specific mandate to protect your code/freedom (such
> > as the FSF). But its a little iffy when it comes to companies where
> > direction might change in the future (*cough*fart* SCO!!). Perhaps this
> > is where the understandable hesitation to assign copyright comes from, I
> > don't know.
> > 
> > What I do know is that while proprietary forks are possible, trying
> > rather hard I cannot come up with a scenario where doing so makes sense
> > to Novell, but doesn't involve severely contorting what we currently
> > know of reality.
> > 
> > IMO the issue is totally benign, thanks mostly to the exemplary
> > behaviour of ximian/novell employees, and I believe this should not be a
> > blocker. Although perhaps novell might sway some more votes if they
> > assigned copyright to FSF.
> > 
> > MY 2 cents.
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > Ryan
> 
> 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.

Not that I'm saying Novell is going to take everything proprietary, but
I don't believe the above is true.  AFAIK the < 5 lines thing doesn't
require a copyright grant because its trivial and hence not really
copyrightable (I'm not a lawyer though).

-JP
-- 
JP Rosevear <jpr novell com>
Novell, Inc.