On 2/11/2010 4:37 PM, RJack wrote:
We are not speaking about the intent of the developers concerning the GPL and "all third parties" (meaning the general public -- remember "General Public License"?) but the relationship among the *developers* themselves. The GPL is irrelevant to the intent among the contributing developers. The developers *actions* carry far for weight than any *language* about intent.
The GPL is entirely relevant - intent can be imputed when there is no document describing the relationship among several authors, but when there is such documentation, there is no need to search for intent. The authors have all stated exactly what the copyright relationship among them is, by using the GPL as their license. Had they wished to create a joint work, they would have said so in the license. But they did not. The notion that a joint work happens by accident is laughable. This is what a document creating a joint work looks like: <http://www.openoffice.org/licenses/jca.pdf> 1. Contributor owns, and has sufficient rights to contribute, all source code and related material intended to be compiled or integrated with the source code for the OpenOffice.org open source product (the "Contribution") which Contributor has ever delivered, and Sun has accepted, for incorporation into the technology made available under the OpenOffice.org open source project. 2. Contributor hereby assigns to Sun joint ownership in all worldwide common law and statutory rights associated with the copyrights, copyright application, copyright registration and moral rights in the Contribution to the extent allowable under applicable local laws and copyright conventions. Contributor agrees that this assignment may be submitted by Sun to register a copyright in the Contribution. Contributor retains the right to use the Contribution for Contributor's own purposes. This Joint Copyright Assignment supersedes and replaces all prior copyright assignments made by Contributor to Sun under the OpenOffice.org project. 3. Contributor is legally entitled to grant the above assignment and agrees not to provide any Contribution that violates any law or breaches any contract. _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
