JTK wrote:
> Nonono, why does AOL not require you to assign copyright of the code
> you contribute to Mozilla over to *AOL*?
To put it bluntly, because people don't trust AOL, and thus wouldn't
contribute code to the Mozilla project if copyright assignment to AOL
were required.
If people just assigned copyright on their code to AOL, then AOL would
then be the sole copyright holder on that code, and, as the copyright
holder, could at a certain point decide to stop releasing the code under
an open source / free software license. (AOL couldn't necessarily
prevent people from distributing versions of the code previously
released, but AOL could decide to take development internal to AOL and
release any further AOL-enhanced versions of that code only under a
proprietary license.)
I might add that people aren't suspicious of just AOL. It's pretty rare
for open source / free software developers to assign copyright on their
code to a commercial company. IMO the reasons developers are willing to
assign copyright to the FSF are because a) the FSF is not a for-profit
organization; b) they trust Stallman and the FSF to "do the right
thing"; and c) the FSF assignment contracts contain some legal
guarantees about the particular licence terms under which the FSF will
distribute the code.
Frank
--
Frank Hecker
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
