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Lack of developers delays OpenOffice.org (ComputerWorld)Lack of developers delays OpenOffice.org (ComputerWorld)Posted Apr 20, 2005 12:35 UTC (Wed) by forthy (guest, #1525)In reply to: Lack of developers delays OpenOffice.org (ComputerWorld) by JoeBuck Parent article: Lack of developers delays OpenOffice.org (ComputerWorld)
With the FSF, the contributor signs over copyright Nope. With the FSF, the contributor still retains all original author's rights. Since the FSF also promises not to exercise the "take it proprietary" right it would have from a copyright assignment, the only one who can dual-license the product is the author(s).
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Lack of developers delays OpenOffice.org (ComputerWorld) Posted Apr 20, 2005 13:08 UTC (Wed) by nathan (subscriber, #3559) [Link] With the FSF you sign a 'copyright assignment' thereby giving the FSF the copyright on the work -- for the reasons mentioned above about being able to sue.
The nice thing about the GPL is it protects you, the author, from the FSF going nuts. They could decide to relicense it under some other licence (they are the copyright owner, so can do that). In the insanely unlikely event they did so under a non-GPL like license, you still have access to the work under the GPL license anyway -- because unlike certain other licenses it can't be retroactively terminated.
Lack of developers delays OpenOffice.org (ComputerWorld) Posted Apr 20, 2005 14:12 UTC (Wed) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link] You are both wrong. The assignment is a contract, of course. The copyrightdoes go to the FSF, but the FSF licenses back all of the original rights so you can still use your work in a proprietary work or whatever. However the contract forbids the FSF from releasing the work under a non-GPL license so you don't have to worry about them turning into a company or something. And, as you said, you always have access to the work based on any license you distributed it with before the assignment of copyright.
Lack of developers delays OpenOffice.org (ComputerWorld) Posted Apr 20, 2005 20:26 UTC (Wed) by hmmm (guest, #28931) [Link] Its the stupid, stupid.
This is on a per application basis. Something like GCC expects you to sign over copyright for any contributions you want included into their distribution. You can always take their code, add you modifications, keep your copyright and distribute it without any problems, but if you want your code to make it into GCC 4.0 you need to sign over copyright so they can legally enforce the GPL on their software.
The FSF does not do this. The copyright owners do this. The same thing happens for the Linux kernel.
Lack of developers delays OpenOffice.org (ComputerWorld) Posted Apr 21, 2005 0:49 UTC (Thu) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link] The FSF certainly does do this. Or, if you prefer, the GNU project does.All non-trivial changes require copyright assignment to the FSF in order to be incorporated into the FSF-distributed version. Of course you an fork, as that is your right under the GPL; that has nothing to do with who holds the copyright.
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