I see no problems

Posted Oct 29, 2009 9:02 UTC (Thu) by cate (subscriber, #1359)
Parent article: Community contributions and copyright assignment

I really see no problems.

AFAIK (IANAL) the moral right cannot be assigned/transferred, and AFAIK using
a software in a non-free manner could violate the author intentions about the
code. IMHO the Canonical agreement is too weak to imply proprietary license,
and a simple "This is free software" on every file (as it is in normal use)
clear the author intentions.

Thus: IMO Canonical cannot distribute a non-free version of Upstream.

PS: This is probably a lot European-centric, but considering that a lot of
developers write software in Europe, it is a good deterrent to bad things.

to post comments

I see no problems

Posted Oct 29, 2009 9:13 UTC (Thu) by amikins (guest, #451) [Link] (2 responses)

In other portions of the world (US in particular) Canonical's agreement is
actually as problematic as our editor explains. Europe's concept of 'moral
rights' does not exist in the US, and is not a dominant concept throughout
the world (although it does show up in other areas if I remember correctly).

I see no problems

Posted Oct 29, 2009 9:23 UTC (Thu) by cate (subscriber, #1359) [Link] (1 responses)

Yes, but in a collaborative project it is enough to have some "European"
developers to block proprietary changes. And fortunately this block is valid
in all the world.

I see no problems

Posted Oct 29, 2009 10:51 UTC (Thu) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

How about European projects such as QT and MySQL? How does a similar agreement work for them?

I see no problems

Posted Oct 29, 2009 10:14 UTC (Thu) by johill (subscriber, #25196) [Link] (1 responses)

The author's intentions don't matter -- the agreement will surely include a clause that hands over all _usage_ rights of the code, iow. the moral authorship right doesn't matter.

This is how coding/etc. for money works in Europe too -- you retain your moral rights, but your employer gets _all_ usage rights, which typically includes taking those right away from you so that while you can still claim authorship of the code, you cannot use it in any way.

I see no problems

Posted Oct 29, 2009 10:36 UTC (Thu) by cate (subscriber, #1359) [Link]

I don't agree (IANAL). The purpose and the intention are important. And no,
you cannot give the *all* usages. (see the curt rules about moral rights)

For a usual software job the usage of a work is nearly clear; but OTOH I'm
pretty sure that if my employer will use my code for malware (and it was
not a scope of my code and my company), I can block it (I'm in every case
the author of the code, so my reputation could suffer).

I've some more doubts with the change from free to proprietary license.

But if I'm active in free software movement (code and philosophy), if I'm
know n to be a "purist" and I contribute to a free software (maybe Upload),
my reputation will suffer with a proprietary change in license, whenever
the Canonical agreement I signed (the program is clear marked as free
software, and there is nothing so explicit about turning in a proprietary
software). This is an extreme, but IMHO it is also valid (with some more
doubts) to usual developers.

Anyway IANAL

Irrelevant argument

Posted Oct 29, 2009 16:49 UTC (Thu) by southey (guest, #9466) [Link]

The person has knowingly given Canonical ownership of the code. There is nothing in the agreement to keep the code non-free nor to keep the author's intentions. So Canonical can do what it likes with it.