Copyright Assignment / Sharing [LWN.net]

Copyright Assignment / Sharing

Posted Mar 7, 2008 19:45 UTC (Fri) by kripkenstein (subscriber, #43281)
Parent article: OpenOffice.org moving to LGPLv3

I never noticed this before, but it seems the JCA and now SCA let you share copyright with
Sun, instead of assigning over all of your rights. Is this standard in FOSS projects? AFAIK
the FSF requires complete assignment to them, with the rationale that only as the sole owners
can they enforce the GPL in court if necessary. Why, then, is Sun not concerned by that?

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Posted Mar 7, 2008 20:46 UTC (Fri) by Sutoka (guest, #43890) [Link]

In my experience, most* FOSS projects do not require transfer (or sharing) 
of copyright control. With the exception of GNU projects, I'm pretty sure 
transfer/sharing is more so the exception rather than the rule, and may 
not be _that_ needed for enforcement (mostly just for changing the license 
easily?)


* I haven't really looked closely, pretty sure most of the common bigger 
FOSS projects like the Linux kernel, KDE, and lots of GNOME applications 
don't require any copyright magic. I think BusyBox doesn't do any sort of 
copyright pooling and it looks like it hasn't stopped them from enforcing 
their license**

** http://lwn.net/Articles/272041/

Posted Mar 7, 2008 21:14 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

There are lots of different projects that require copyright transfer in order to contribute.
MySQL is another example of a project that requires copyright transfer. 

Another example is Apache foundation asks for copyright assignments.

There are a variety or reasons why you'd want copyright assignment. 

A couple examples from GNU include that you don't have to worry about legal representation..
the only people that can go after license violations are the ones that own the copyrights. Of
course GNU offshoots like the Freedom law foundation have made it easier for independant
programmers to get that sort of representation.

Another example is if you want to have more licensing flexibility. GNU will let individuals or
projects have special exceptions for code they want to use from GNU software.. Like Gnash is
based on public domain-licensed software and if the original author wanted code back they
would be willing to do it. In this way GNU is often much less licensing-nazi-ish then they
seem at first blush. It's much easier for people to negotiate with them then, say, Apache
foundation for licensing compatibility issues. 
People like MySQL or Trolltech will have proprietary versions of their software available for
people that do not want to abide by the terms of the GPL for whatever reason. 


Of course with out the copyright assignment a project can track down the original programmer
and get special exceptions, but that is a lot more tougher and most people don't want to deal
with that on a individual basis.


This seems to be what Sun is after. They want to be able to change licensing terms to suite
customers or third party software company's demands. This is normal stuff and I don't think is
something that is worth being alarmed about.

Posted Mar 7, 2008 23:02 UTC (Fri) by atai (subscriber, #10977) [Link]

Some GNU projects (mainly the core ones) require copyright assignment.  Many other GNU
projects do not require assignment at all.

Posted Mar 8, 2008 0:59 UTC (Sat) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link]

The FSF most certainly does require assigning copyrights to them for any substantial modifications to all GNU projects.

Not every set of files under GPL is a "GNU project"...

Posted Mar 8, 2008 1:32 UTC (Sat) by atai (subscriber, #10977) [Link]

I know what I talk about. I am a GNU maintainer. But I will use a large GNU project as an example.

GNU Telephony, for example, has its sources copyrighted by David Sugar, Open Source Telecom Corp, etc., to name a few. No where does the FSF require copyright assignment for this project.

Contributions need to be under the same license as the rest of the project (GPL v2, v3, etc.) but that is not copyright assignment.

Posted Mar 11, 2008 5:30 UTC (Tue) by jamesh (subscriber, #1159) [Link]

While the FSF copyright assignment form may not use the words "joint copyright", it does
include an offer to give you a license to your contributions (note that this does not include
other people's contributions) under non-restrictive terms.  So you end up with pretty much the
same rights as if you'd signed a joint copyright agreement.

As for the other side of the contract, with the OOo agreement Sun can essentially do whatever
they want with the code (and since they hold joint copyright on everyone's code they aren't
restricted by LGPL).  With the FSF agreements, there is a clause requiring the Foundation to
distribute the work under a free software license.

This means that if the FSF tried to distribute my code under a proprietary license the
assignment agreement would be void and they'd be infringing my copyright.  In contrast, Sun is
actively using their privileged position w.r.t. OpenOffice to sell StarOffice.  As a
contributor, I know which agreement I'd prefer to sign.

Posted Mar 11, 2008 5:55 UTC (Tue) by kripkenstein (subscriber, #43281) [Link]

I agree with your sentiments, I would in general prefer the FSF way as well. Just a minor
addition, though, regarding

> With the FSF agreements, there is a clause requiring the Foundation to
> distribute the work under a free software license.

The Sun agreement has the same type of clause. That is, both are committed to releasing the
project under a FOSS license. Sun however, in *addition*, releases it under a proprietary
license.

Posted Mar 21, 2008 10:11 UTC (Fri) by anton (guest, #25547) [Link]

AFAIK the FSF requires complete assignment to them

When the project becomes a GNU project, the copyright holders can choose whether they want to transfer copyright to the FSF, or whether they want to keep it. We (the Gforth project) chose to transfer the copyright, because the FSF is better equiped to legally defend the freedom of the software. If the copyright is transferred to the FSF, they ask all further contributors for a copyright assignment or a copyright disclaimer (which puts the contribution in the public domain).