Ship of Theseus

Posted Feb 1, 2010 15:06 UTC (Mon) by magnuson (subscriber, #5114)
Parent article: Canonical copyright assignment policy 'same as others' (ITWire)

An interesting position that all of the value of the codebase is present in the originally posted version and all subsequent patches are of "no value" apart from the main branch.

What happens when as a result of these valueless (on their own) patches the entirety of the code base has been replaced by contributed code? All of the "value" of the original code is now gone, or at least transformed, into the current code. A vanishingly small percentage of Linux these days was actually authored by Linus himself and an assignment policy like this would enable him to take it proprietary at any time. Profiting off of the backs of countless contributors.

I expect the Canonical codebase is considerable more insular in that a far smaller percentage of it is coded by people not employed by Canonical, but who's to say that will be the case forever?

Ship of Theseus

Posted Feb 1, 2010 16:05 UTC (Mon) by did447 (guest, #49454) [Link]

> but who's to say that will be the case forever?

For contributions from individuals? I'd say the taxman.

Ship of Theseus

Posted Feb 1, 2010 16:56 UTC (Mon) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link]

I guess the people who contribute to Launchpad already profit from it in some way. In any case, they should know what a copyright assignment entails. There is nothing really sleazy about it. So you don't send in a patch, fair enough.

But more importantly, what you seem to forget is the quite inevitable and considerable spin-off. Free software remains free, even if it's dual licensed (which does not automatically mean proprietary). There are many projects, individuals and companies who in any case profit from the work being done on such projects -- in other ways.