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Copyright assignment - Once bitten, twice shy (The H)
The H has put up a
lengthy look at copyright assignment policies. There may not be much
new here for LWN readers, but it's a reasonable summary of the
anti-assignment position. "But it isn't just the paperwork that
causes friction. The code may be released under a copyleft licence, but
once the copyright has been re-assigned, you have surrendered your rights,
and the new owner is able to apply all the toxic conditions and
ramifications that apply to any closed source licence in a simultaneous
release of your code. The developer has the option of forking the code, but
this is not what you are aiming for when you contribute to a free software
project."
(Log in to post comments)
Copyright assignment - Once bitten, twice shy (The H) Posted Aug 6, 2010 14:20 UTC (Fri) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] A good essay on this:
Copyright assignment - Once bitten, twice shy (The H) Posted Aug 6, 2010 14:43 UTC (Fri) by zotz (guest, #26117) [Link]
To assign with comfort, we need assignment with comforting, binding assurances. Perhaps with poison pills even.
This problem is wider than copyright assignment though. It goes to even use, promotion, attention, etc. And not just for code. I see the problem when it comes to Free Art, Music, etc.
all the best,
drew
Copyright assignment - Once bitten, twice shy (The H) Posted Aug 6, 2010 22:46 UTC (Fri) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]
Just make the agreement say copyright is joint, but as part of the payment to you, they agree that they will only ever licence your code under a copyleft licence.
If they then take it proprietary, they've broken the contract, and you can demand cancellation of the assignment :-) (just make sure the contract says that is the penalty!) And away you go ...
Not that I'll ever get round to doing it ... :-) but rather than assign copyrights, if I get my project off the ground it will have a trademark licence that lets me sell binary licences on condition that I make the source available (in other words, I can let corps take advantage of the "pass the written offer on" condition in the GPL). Of course, I'd then need a watertight contract that if they make any mods, they have to pass the source back to me, so I can make it publicly available!
Cheers,
Copyright assignment - Once bitten, twice shy (The H) Posted Aug 7, 2010 9:40 UTC (Sat) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]
Where would that help?
It may help for the case of the FSF and similar bodies. But that's not where the problem lies.
OpenOffice and MySQL have had proprietary versions since day 1. Normally copyright assignment is needed in order to maintain a proprietary version.
Also, what would have happened in the case of Wesnoth (assuming that this project had copyright assignment, and maybe also slightly twisting facts for the sake of a nice example)? One contributor does not agree to such a license. But the lead developer thinks it is a good one. What exactly is a copyleft license?
And then we get to the poison pill. One famous case is QT. The poison pill in that case is that the license would change to BSD if the company stops maintaining it. But under a different business model of the maintainer this is not so much of a poison.
If we need copyright assignment for making it simple to handle infringements, isn't there a safer way to do it?
Copyright assignment - Once bitten, twice shy (The H) Posted Aug 7, 2010 10:11 UTC (Sat) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
I would like to hear of any case where there were problems based on the fact that the person bringing the lawsuit didn't have complete copyright assignment.
two of the highest profile projects in terms of GPL enforcement lawsuits are BusyBox and the Kernel. Both of these are projects that do not require copyright assignment. In the case of BusyBox you even have the situation where one author who participated in many lawsuits decided that the way the law firm was handling GPL enforcement cases is wrong and explicitly withdrew from participating in additional lawsuits, and the lawsuits are still winning.
the key is that you have to prove that you have the copyright to code that is being infringed, and that that code is large enough to be worthy of copyright.
if someone is shipping Linux in violation of the GPL, there are thousands of people who could sue them over it, and nothing prevents each of them from suing the offender independently (even in different jurisdictions) now if the company starts complying after the first lawsuit, the additional ones may not win much in terms of damages, but technically each of them would be suing over different code.
Copyright assignment - Once bitten, twice shy (The H) Posted Aug 6, 2010 17:06 UTC (Fri) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Hmm... project Harmony disturbs me. The link article talks about "inter-company agreements" as well as contributor agreements.
I'm not particularly keen on the though of corporate entities sitting at a table agreeing on how they can share contributions among themselves possibly for proprietary ends which originated from a large pool of volunteer contributors who were strong armed into assigning their copyright over to one of those companies to participate as a contributor.
Nope not keen on that at all.
=jef
Project Harmony Posted Aug 6, 2010 18:35 UTC (Fri) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] If you (for an "all of you" value of "you") are in the area of LinuxCon next week, there will be a session on Project Harmony. Might be a good place to express any views you might have on the subject...
Project Harmony Posted Aug 9, 2010 14:36 UTC (Mon) by amandabrock (guest, #69458) [Link]
The BOAF at LinuxCon is at 5 on Wednesday (EST) and I would be really pleased to see you guys come along and talk about any concerns. We will also have a similar session at OWF in Paris on 30 September.
Cheers Amanda
Project Harmony Posted Aug 9, 2010 14:40 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
How about the large majority of people who wouldn't be able to attend that conference? It would be nice to provide a good way for them to provide feedback. My take is that contributor license agreements are unfair unless there is a counter guarantee that it is not going to be used as a means for centralizing copyright control to sell proprietary version of a copylefted codebase with volunteer and competing vendors participation.
Project Harmony Posted Aug 9, 2010 17:10 UTC (Mon) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
I'm not knocking the value of face-to-face session. Nor am I knocking the utility of a private wiki as a way to organize work. But you need to do better than that.
There needs to be some effort at public _transparency_ with the large distributed contributor base who are going to be asked to sign contributor agreements in the future based on what is discussed by the small (unrepresentative) group you put together for your face-to-face meetings. Is a representative from the FSF going to be in attendance? Is a representative of Mozilla? Apache? To give any such face-to-face meeting credibility at being equipped to really talk about the issue I think you'd have to representatives from at least those three organizations in on the discussion as well as representation from existing independent contributors.
So I beg of you... make a video recording the BoFs put the videos and the audio up for public review. Require a sign in sheet of everyone in attendance and make a public record of what organizations have a representatives there and who is there as an independent contributor.
And when you put the working group together who will be working on the _private_ wiki, publish the names of the people and the organizations they represent.
Project Harmony Posted Aug 9, 2010 18:58 UTC (Mon) by amandabrock (guest, #69458) [Link]
Anyone can join the Harmony Project. All of the info you are requesting is on the WIKI and you can see it there. Would you like to subscribe? If you could register on Launchpad and email me your Launchpad name then I would be happy to subscribe you to the WIKI and the list?
We will be working on a press release at our meeting this week, so hopefully that will bring more transparency.
Amanda
amanda.brock@canonical.com
Project Harmony Posted Aug 9, 2010 19:01 UTC (Mon) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
URL for the public wiki? The link'd announcement specifically speak of a private wiki.
-jef
Project Harmony Posted Aug 9, 2010 19:08 UTC (Mon) by amandabrock (guest, #69458) [Link]
That's right. Its a private WIKI for the participants in Project Harmony to work with. Participation is open to all interested parties. The Project at the request of the participants is under Chatham House Rules, but you are of course welcome to join.
Project Harmony Posted Aug 9, 2010 19:35 UTC (Mon) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
So the only way that I can verify for myself that external contributor interests are being handled, is to sign up for a process by which I implicitly agree not to publicly share anything I learn via participation with other external contributors who are themselves not a party to the process. And by communicating outside of that process I run the risk of having my access revoked in accordance to Chatham House rules?
Is there a legal document I must sign when in agreeing to participate in the Harmony Project... a contributor agreement or NDA? Or is Chatham enforced on an honor system basis.
If I told you explicitly that I would be signing up with the expressed intention of making public summaries of the ongoing work available for public review and comment.. would that bar me from being made a participant or put me in legal jeopardy in accordance with the terms and conditions I would be asked to agree to when signing up to participate?
-jef
Project Harmony Posted Aug 9, 2010 21:17 UTC (Mon) by amandabrock (guest, #69458) [Link]
Hi Jef
The Chatham House Rules being applied to Project Harmony was done at other participants' request, so I have no authority to remove this and anyone who does not respect it will not be able to participate I am afraid.
We do have a Project Harmony meeting on Wednesday before the BOAF and I will raise your request at that. It may be that we can do something on a summary/ minutes type basis and I have added this to the agenda already.
We will also be working on a press release to update on the project at that meeting too.
Amanda
Project Harmony Posted Aug 9, 2010 21:53 UTC (Mon) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Yes... a public summary or minutes would be good.
If the point of the Chatham House rule is meant to provide a space to allow participants to speak freely without being publicly attacked on their individual statements, than I accept that keeping the contributions of individual participants anonymous is appropriate.. as long as summary or set of minutes of _what_ is discussed and more importantly agreed on is made available for public feedback...including draft versions of work product that lives in the wiki on occasion.
I'm not trying to call individuals out by focusing public opinion on them. But I firmly believe that as a group the participants in the discussions need to hold themselves accountable to external contributor input someway somehow. Public meeting minutes and if possible pre-meeting agenda items are a good way to allow externals to verify the discussion is on track to meet their needs...at a minimum.
Who discusses it is only important insofar as they are representing the interest of a larger pool of contributors and those contributors deserve a heads-up. Towards that end, I encourage you to encourage each participating organization to _choose_ to publicly state that they are participating in this process, and to affirm their commitment to accepting feedback concerning the published agenda and minutes from their existing contributorbase in an existing contributor facing communication channel of their choosing. If organization X is at the table, then I think the existing contributorbase for org X should know that, and if something comes up in the minutes that needs clarification, they should be able to reach out to the person in org X as a representative into the process. I'm going to be penning private emails to as many organizations as I have backchannel access to (who may or may not be participating in this project) encouraging exactly this sort of statement of participation.
-jef
Copyright assignment - Once bitten, twice shy (The H) Posted Aug 6, 2010 19:55 UTC (Fri) by amk (subscriber, #19) [Link]
The participants aren't all companies; for example, the Python Software Foundation's counsel is attending, and the PSF is a non-profit.
Copyright assignment - Once bitten, twice shy (The H) Posted Aug 6, 2010 20:13 UTC (Fri) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Do you have a full list of entities that will be attending? Or in fact any existing archived public discussion by any project or non-profit about their interest in this initiative so far?
Are the non-profits in attendance who are there to talk about contributor agreements going to be participating in the "private wiki" discussion concerning "inter-company" agreements as indicated in the text for the Bof session?
http://events.linuxfoundation.org/linuxcon2010/brock
-jef
Copyright assignment - Once bitten, twice shy (The H) Posted Aug 6, 2010 21:11 UTC (Fri) by ajb (subscriber, #9694) [Link]
One curiosity is that FOSS projects which don't have copyright assignment, such as the linux kernel, are simultaneously a commons and an anticommons - a commons, in the sense that the code is free to use, and an anticommons in the sense that the fragmentation of the ownership prevents it being sold or privatised.
Impossible in some jurisdictions Posted Aug 8, 2010 7:43 UTC (Sun) by tglx (subscriber, #31301) [Link]
In some jurisdictions copyright assignment is impossible. That's a fact FSF and others are happily ignoring.
Even if a person who lives in such a place (e.g. Germany) is not aware of that fact at the moment when he/she signs the paper, the assignment is not worth the paper it's written on.
Thanks, tglx
Impossible in some jurisdictions Posted Aug 8, 2010 9:57 UTC (Sun) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]
That's not exactly the whole truth either. While you are right, that for example in Germany or Austria, it's not possible to give up your rights as a creator, you can still give someone an exclusive license to your work granting them all the distribution/modification/sublicense/... rights which is effectively the same as copyright assignment. And as judges usually try to find the intent of the original invalid statement/contract, they would see your copyright assignment as such a license.
Impossible in some jurisdictions Posted Aug 9, 2010 5:24 UTC (Mon) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] Besides, the FSF assignment contract contains a grant-back, so that the contributor keeps his/her rights to do anything with the work. The contributor isn't signing all rights to the work away.
Copyright assignment - Once bitten, twice shy (The H) Posted Aug 10, 2010 15:38 UTC (Tue) by tytso (subscriber, #9993) [Link] There's been a number of misunderstandings on this thread, which I'd like to correct. First of all, to the question of whether the representatives from FSF, Mozilla, Apache, etc., are participating in Project Harmony, what I can say is that there is a large number of poeple who are participating in the project, including many of the most prominent open source foundations and organizations, as well as companies. Not all of these people are in favor of explicit copyright assignments. In fact, I am very much against requiring copyright assignment agreements (CAA), and tend to view them as being somewhere between "necessary evil" and "downright evil" --- however, the Project Harmony is open enough that even those of us who don't feel that CAA's are a good thing are welcome to participate. Secondly, what Chatham House rules mean; the idea is to protect the identities of people who make statements so they aren't forced to defend any statements they might make in public when it might be trying to find common ground, floating a trial baloon, etc. However, what is actually said can most certainly be reported out. So for example, I can say that during the first Project Harmony meeting, ____ ______ stated that he or she felt that a very important principle that should be adhered to is, "First Do Know Harm", and that means that Project Harmony must not generate legal FUD with respect to those projects which use implicit copyright licensing regime and trying to claim that somehow a project is at risk if they refuse to use an explicit copyright assignment agreement. However, I can't say who said that (although he or she is free to reveal himself or herself). I can also say that there appeared to me to be general consensus with respect to that sentiment. Also, anyone can join. So if you want access to the Wiki, just join Project Harmony. Joining does not imply that you are in favor of copyright assignment agreements, or even copyright licensing agreements. I am fairly strongly opposed to the former, and hold a very healthy skeptism towards the latter, but I have joined Project Harmony and am participating in its discussions. (As I said, I think they are somewhere between "necessary evil" and "downright evil".) Finally, to those who think that Mark Shuttleworth is innocent with respect to the disruptable actions to force a copyright assignment agreement down all of the contributors of Upstrart, and that it's the lawyers' fault --- this is absolutely not true. First of all, Mark has been quoted as saying essentially the same thing that Sun Microsystems (aka the Institute for Advanced Research in Open Source Community Distruction :-) has attempted to do with respect to claiming saying that Canonical was unique and special and thus deserved the right to make proprietary products based on other people's open source contributions. Secondly, I've met Amanda Brock, who is Canonical's Chair, and she has impressed me as someone who is trying to do the right thing, and someone who is an honorable human being. But she's the lawyer, and Mark's her client. So it's not fair to lay the blame on Canonical's ownership grab on "the lawyers" which would mean people like Amanda specifically. Let's give the credit and the blame for the Canonical owernship grab where it belongs --- on Mark Shuttleworth.
Copyright assignment - Once bitten, twice shy (The H) Posted Aug 10, 2010 16:56 UTC (Tue) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
I'm reading back over the discussion here... and I'm pretty confident that noone has yet laid blame at the leathery batlike wings of any particular lawyer or group of lawyers. I certain had no intention of assigning blame to Ms. Brock, I have specific questions about the process and unfortunately Ms. Brock has to be the one they are addressed to publicly, because she's the only person who has up to this point publicly stated an involvement. There's no other person to hold a public discussion with. Well up till you. I would very much like to see more active participants choose to announce their participation on their own terms.. ahead of something like a general face-to-face BoF session at a conference.
My goal is to make sure that there is enough transparency in the process so that external contributors can verify that their interests are being represented. I daresay that noone really wants to see 100,000+ independent voices actively participating in the conversation...and it would be better if there were some ability for a smaller group of participants to act as a representatives on behalf of already established contributor communities. I think that's probably implicitly happening already, but unless organizations make a public statement of their involvement to their own contributor communities its not as clear as it could be. And even then there needs to be some public transparency about what is being discussed.
So as long as I'm not putting myself in legal risk by making redacted summaries of the semi-private discussions public and publicly editorializing those redacted summaries... I'm more than happy to sign up as a participant.
-jef
Copyright assignment - Once bitten, twice shy (The H) Posted Aug 11, 2010 18:59 UTC (Wed) by tytso (subscriber, #9993) [Link] I'm reading back over the discussion here... and I'm pretty confident that noone has yet laid blame at the leathery batlike wings of any particular lawyer or group of lawyers. I certain had no intention of assigning blame to Ms. Brock My apologies for the confusion. The person who laid the blame of the Upstart debacle at the feet of Ms. Brock was not on LWN, but on Slashdot. Also, my apologies for two typos that I noticed in my earlier postings. First, where I said, "First, Do Know Harm", that should have read "First, Do No Harm". Secondly, where I said, "I've met Amanda Brock, who is Canonical's Chair," that should have read "I've met Amanda Brock, who is Canonical's General Counsel". Hopefully that didn't cause too much confusion. (This is what you get when you try to post while at a conference and not getting enough sleep. :-/) -- Ted
Copyright assignment means you don't have any faith in your license Posted Aug 10, 2010 21:36 UTC (Tue) by nwnk (guest, #52271) [Link]
That's sort of an extreme way of saying it, but it's true. Requiring copyright assignment means you anticipate a scenario where the existing license won't match what you want to do with the code. It may be an utterly benign scenario; that's not the point. The point is it's ceding a very fundamental right to the copyright assignee, a right that potentially undermines the entire terms of the license you thought you were agreeing to.
You are, in effect, hoping that HAL opens the pod bay doors.
Project owners that require copyright assignment should think very very carefully about how much of their credibility they're bargaining with.
Copyright assignment means you don't have any faith in your license Posted Aug 13, 2010 7:08 UTC (Fri) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link]
ISTM the goal of copyright assignment is to give someone else standing to sue in case of copyright infringement.
I don't think it possible to give someone else standing to sue without giving up other rights as well.
Copyright assignment means you don't have any faith in your license Posted Aug 13, 2010 7:19 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
It is often used a reason as a reason but it is very clear that enforcement of license does not require copyrights of all the code. Neither BusyBox nor Linux kernel which has any copyright assignment has the most successful public GPL enforcement efforts. FSF used to think it might be a problem but they don't anymore it seems.
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