Chris Cannam wrote:

> I don't know whether you can reassign copyright in
> Germany

No, you can't.

> I assume there are substantial reasons not to license the library under
> the LGPL, such as the fact that a commercial rival could then use it in
> their own proprietary products.

One could think about releasing substantial additions created by the Open Source
Community under the LGPL. Julian would then be able to sell his code using a
commercial license and could still use the additions and Open Source developers
would not have to reassign copyrights.

An alternative might be to release that additional code using dual licensing:
GPL and LGPL.

The main practical problem would be the mixture of GPL and LGPL code.

> One practical idea might be to suggest that authors of big contributions
> could (as an alternative to assigning copyright) retain their copyright
> but license it under a very permissive licence such as the BSD one.

Both of us obviously had the same idea.

Cheers,
Andreas

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