Copyright Assignment / Sharing [LWN.net]

Copyright Assignment / Sharing

Posted Mar 11, 2008 5:30 UTC (Tue) by jamesh (subscriber, #1159)
In reply to: Copyright Assignment / Sharing by kripkenstein
Parent article: OpenOffice.org moving to LGPLv3

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.

(Log in to post comments)

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.