ti EMAIL said on Sat, Dec 13, 2003 at 03:38:59AM -0500,: > Each source file is tagged with a header naming him as copyright > followed by a GPL header. For anybody to submit a patch to the > original distribution, you agree that he gets copyright of it.
Requiring assignment of copyright in patches is an issue of project management. Linux, the kernel does not require such assignment. The FSF requires assignment for packages in the GNU project. It is an issue of individual perception. > you transfer copyright to somebody after editing source under GPL, or > are these two things unrelated? Will you please clarify this?? > situations later on where the copyright is split out over a million > people, each of which could stop further distribution of his program. Depending on how you look it. See above. > For a code module/library I?ve written and released under the GPL, > is it possible to be incorporated into this previous program If you do not like assigning copyright to the original author, you are free to create your own fork by adding your modifications, and distribute the whole thing yourselves. People did it to GNU Emacs by creating Xemacs. > Can you add requirements to a license in a source file such that > your name must always be included as writing the file if anybody > decides to use your code? (Questioning if this can be legally > binding.) This is what the GPL and several other free/libre licenses do. They go a bit further; and also require that the modifications, if any, made by the (re)distributor also should be mentioned. Regarding legal binding -- In all these years, only the SCO has been silly enough to question its bindingness. -- +~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~+ Mahesh T. Pai, LL.M., 'NANDINI', S. R. M. Road, Ernakulam, Cochin-682018, Kerala, India. http://in.geocities.com/paivakil +~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~+ -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3