If JRuby is going down the foundation route - copyright will be the
same as for Apache. Contributors sign a CLA : see half way down
http://www.apache.org/licenses/
Individuals who work for other _companies_ as developers are
routinely signing most or all copyright to them*. The CLA allows for
the foundation to claim copyright of certain sources or fragments of
sources _as well_
If the developer is not working for anyone, or their company does not
routinely take all their copyright (check employment contract), then
the individual has a copyright on sources or fragments of sources
from the moment they are published, with the CLA allowing the
foundation to have copyright on same _as well_
The spat between JBoss and Apache over Geronimo commits was complex.
One minor part of of the disagreement, caused discussion around the
fact that even though a source was labeled "copyright JBoss Inc" the
changes made were done by individuals were in fact joint copyright of
a series of fragments (commits). Thus the writers of certain pieces
did not relinquish copyright for the individual changes, just because
they were d stuff that would end up in a SourceForge CVS repo and
labeled with a copyright for another.
* In the case of employment contracts, in most cases individuals are
not retaining copyrights, nor have rights to sign things to a
foundation without employers consent.
Thus the language you folks are using should not include "remove your
claims for copyright" but should include thinks like "grant an
irrevocable copyright to the JRuby foundation in addition to the
committers rights in respect of individual changes". And your
employer needs to say they agree.
- Paul
On Nov 17, 2007, at 6:32 AM, Ola Bini wrote:
Charles Oliver Nutter wrote:
Peter K Chan wrote:
What exactly does removing one's copyright mean?
Does it mean that the copyright of the previous contribution is
now assigned
to the JRuby project? In public domain? Simply unacknowledged in
the source
code, but remain in force?
Also, who is "you" that is "removing" the copyright? Charles
Nutter? Sun?
JRuby team?
Sorry to sound like a license police, but I just want to make
sure tht we
are clear on all fronts.
"you" that is removing the copyrights is collectively "the jruby
community". The wheels are in motion to set up a foundation or an
organization or something, and I'm all set to sign over all my
copyright to that organization when it's established. My request
for permission to remove copyrights now is to hopefully reduce the
amount of hassle later to chase people down. Anyone that's paying
attention and willing to relenquish copyright can proactively do
so to avoid us having to chase folks down later.
Once again - not to be a troublemaker - but if you remove your
claims for copyright on something without at the same time giving
that copyright to some other entity, you effectively put the work
in the public domain. That might be fine, but it will be kinda
weird too, especially when we put some community copyright
statement on it.
--
Ola Bini (http://ola-bini.blogspot.com) JRuby Core Developer
Developer, ThoughtWorks Studios (http://studios.thoughtworks.com)
Practical JRuby on Rails (http://apress.com/book/view/9781590598818)
"Yields falsehood when quined" yields falsehood when quined.
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