on Wed, Oct 02, 2002, Rick Moen ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > Quoting John Cowan ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): > > > You could, but "once GPL, always GPL"; there would be no way to > > incorporate open improvements into the closed version. > > Requesting (and getting) an appropriate grant of permission from the > patch's copyright holder would seem to suffice. In fact, some > maintainers of GPLed codebases (e.g., Tripwire) don't accept patches > without formal assignment of copyright.
s/some/many/ For a number of reasons, securing a copyright assignment can be a very useful step, both for reasons of releasing code under other terms, and to pursue copyright infringement actions (for which clear ownership of copyright is very helpful). Note that in the case of the FSF, it's an actual _transfer_ of copyright, with rights granted back to the original author. Other organizations simply require that a grant of rights sufficient to cover forseen needs be made, typically including the right to make use of contributed code in versions of software released under non-free license terms. This is one of the areas of free software licensing (along with general employment contracts for free software developers) which I feel is highly underappreciated. Licenses get much of the spotlight (and deservedly), but ancillary agreements are being neglected. Peace. -- Karsten M. Self <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? Moderator, Free Software Law Discussion mailing list: http://lists.alt.org/mailman/listinfo/fsl-discuss/
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