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Project Harmony decloaksProject Harmony decloaksPosted Apr 11, 2011 18:42 UTC (Mon) by tetromino (subscriber, #33846)In reply to: Project Harmony decloaks by josh Parent article: Project Harmony decloaks
> What purpose does copyright assignment serve, versus just retaining the copyright and granting an all-permissive license?
The ability to file lawsuits. If the project holds the copyright, it can sue (or decide to not sue!) those who violate the terms of the license.
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Project Harmony decloaks Posted Apr 11, 2011 19:05 UTC (Mon) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]
As I said in my comment, I assumed the project already held some copyrights, which gives them standing to file a lawsuit over copyright infringement. (As evidenced by the many GPL violation suits by people who hold a subset of the copyrights in a project, such as Busybox and Linux.)
You make a good point about the ability to *not* sue, though; copyright assignment does indeed ensure that the original contributor can't sue, at least not without going through the copyright assignee first. However, the article here points out that Project Harmony's agreements (can) include a covenant not to sue; as long as that extended to third parties, and handled the case where the project has the right to offer a different license than the original contribution, that would remove the need for copyright assignment as a way of preventing the original contributor from suing.
Any other reasons a project would want to hold the copyrights rather than just having an agreement in place?
Project Harmony decloaks Posted Apr 11, 2011 23:13 UTC (Mon) by cyd (guest, #4153) [Link]
> as long as that extended to third parties, and handled the case where the project has the right to offer a different license than the original contribution
The easiest way to do that is a copyright assignment.
Project Harmony decloaks Posted Apr 12, 2011 0:00 UTC (Tue) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]
That doesn't make it the right way, just the easy way. A project that wants to solve these problems only one time and get everyone to adopt the solutions ought to get the solution right.
Project Harmony decloaks Posted Apr 17, 2011 16:54 UTC (Sun) by daf (subscriber, #27590) [Link]
I don't understand the need for covenants not to sue. Are contributors and projects suing each other? Over what?
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