I see no problems

Posted Oct 29, 2009 10:14 UTC (Thu) by johill (subscriber, #25196)
In reply to: I see no problems by cate
Parent article: Community contributions and copyright assignment

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.

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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