Re: GNOME Office and OpenOffice (fwd)

[Michael Hoennig "(mi)" <mi sun com>]

Hi Sam,

I read the other answers to your following statement, but to me it 
seemed, nobody brought it really clearly to the point. But before I go 
on: I am not a lawyer.

> 3) Copyright assignment.  Personally, I am unwilling to assign copyright 
of
> my code to Sun.  I think they have good intentions with regard to this
> project, and I respect them greatly for releasing this great body of 
code,
> but I am not willing to trust that they will always be this enlightened.

Preferred would have been a copyright transfer to the "OpenOffice 
Foundation" - but it is not founded yet.

The point in transferring the copyright to a legal person is that only a 
legal person can fight copyright infringements. If 100+ separate people 
had a copyright on their part, all would have to agree to fight a 
copyright violation. You never get all these together. And it would not 
even be possible to fight a company who tries to integrate parts of 
OpenOffice into their own proprietary non-GPL, non-SISSL product! Only 
the copyright transfer to a single, distinct legal person can avoid such 
situations.

	Michael

-- 
I am speaking for myself, not for my employer.
Please do NOT direct any questions about OpenOffice/StarOffice 
to my email address, use appropriate mailing lists instead.