Re: Foundation and Source Code Copyright

[Thomas Wood <thos gnome org>]

On Fri, 3 Aug 2007 07:06:39 -0400
"Luis Villa" <luis tieguy org> wrote:

[...]
> > > A couple of developers, including myself, have been working on a
> > > new capplet for the control center. Since we had been working on
> > > it as a group we decided it would be fairest to assign copyright
> > > to the foundation rather than any particular individual.
> 
> You can always jointly own copyright; if you look around CC I'm sure
> you'll see lots of files that are (c) both jrb and chema, for example.

We were aware of this, but since contributions mean that there are
often a half a dozen different contributors to one file, we thought it
may be easier to assign copyright and then list the contributors as
authors.

After all, should someone who has made just a small patch really be
responsible for the copyright of the whole file, or just the lines they
contributed? The opposite question also applies; Should the person who
started the work be responsible for the contributions of others which
may even unknowingly infringe on other copyrights.

I think these were some of the issues we were hoping to avoid in
assigning the copyright to a single entity. Obviously we also hoped
that assigning the copyright to the foundation would have the advantage
that they would be more prepared to defend the copyright should the
need ever arise.

Regards,

Thomas