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Copyrights and GPL - perhaps IBM should hang on to copyrights in futureCopyrights and GPL - perhaps IBM should hang on to copyrights in futurePosted Sep 26, 2003 18:48 UTC (Fri) by LinuxLobbyist (guest, #6541)In reply to: Copyrights and GPL - perhaps IBM should hang on to copyrights in future by namaseit Parent article: IBM Files New Claims Against SCO in Linux Case (Dow Jones) Incorrect That's a bit broad. ;-) The poster you're responding to was talking about copyright assignments. I don't think anyone here is saying that by licensing your own code under the GPL, you lose rights to your own code. It is only by transferring the actual copyrights (and in the process, producing a sometimes useful paper trail) that you no longer 'own' the code. In those cases, you cannot file an infringment claim against anyone for the code you no longer own. Only the new owner can. But this is completely separate from the GPL. All that matters, though, is that it's clear that IBM has not, in fact, transferred copyrights of all of its Linux contributions to the FSF. Someone else said that it was only its contributions to the toolchain (S/390?) that have been assigned to the FSF. What's clear is that at least some code within the Linux kernel is IBM owned (copyrighted) and that's what the company is suing SCO over in this case. I'm sure that Bruce Perens and others in the FLOSS world will agree with me here that this highly preferable to IBM's previous countersuit using patents as a weapon. With this and its response to HP's Linux indemnification ploy, IBM just earn huge points in my book for really getting Free Software.
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Copyrights and GPL - perhaps IBM should hang on to copyrights in future Posted Sep 26, 2003 19:06 UTC (Fri) by namaseit (guest, #13940) [Link] I do see your point as well, mine is just the as of that quote from groklaw above. I see it that even though you have assigned your copyright to FSF that in the event of breach of contract (GPL) that the auther may still pursue damages. Which I was replying to , "When they do that, they are no longer the legal owners of that work, so they can't file a misappropriation complaint for such code."From what groklaw stated, the author's do not lose that copyright. "Releasing software under the GPL is not the same as releasing it into the public domain. Authors retain their copyrights to software licensed under the GPL. Even when authors assign their copyrights to someone else, such as to the Free Software Foundation, the copyrights remain valid, but with the new owner. Therefore, subsequent to termination of your permissions under the GPL, you are in the unhappy position of violating the copyrights of the software authors, if you continue to distribute their software. Under copyright law, you are not allowed to distribute at all without their permission -- and they have chosen to grant that permission only by means of the GPL."
Copyrights and GPL - perhaps IBM should hang on to copyrights in future Posted Sep 26, 2003 20:15 UTC (Fri) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link] Yes, but the text you are quoting is not talking about the situation you are talking about. It is talking about using the GPL. SCO had claimedthat Linux people were saying that the GPL forced the author to assign copyrights. It doesn't. But of course we weren't saying the GPL did that either. SCO was confused about the requirements of the GPL, or at least pretended The part of the Groklaw quote that does talk about assignments is only
Copyrights and GPL - perhaps IBM should hang on to copyrights in future Posted Sep 27, 2003 0:13 UTC (Sat) by dwalters (guest, #4207) [Link] The Groklaw quote you mentioned: is not 100% correct. More accurately, I believe it should read: Of course, most of the time, the author and the copyright holder are one and the same person.
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