>Nope. GNU has you assign the copyright to them. They have legal ownership
>of it.
>
>I think you'll find this better clarified -- and probably your complaint
>rectified -- once you read those 800 messages.
Anthony,
I don't see it, sorry. Could you explain to me what's better with having
one person hold all copyright than using CopyLeft?
>> But I would prefer, if the sources were required to be distributed freely,
>>and if the engine itself (i.e. the "HyperCard application" of OpenCard) was
>>allowed to be copied freely. If someone compiled in proprietary code,
>>he/she would have to ship a sharedLib and headers along, or make it a
>>standalone.
>
>Why can't they ship source?
They could, but then it wouldn't be proprietary code anymore and we
wouldn't have that problem. What I'm saying is that if people integrate
code they don't want to share, they still should be obliged to ship along
the remaining code and offer a means to recompile it.
>We are still allowed to fork. Please see the organizational proposal, draft
>four.
>
>That is my definitive statement.
But when one person owns the rights, we'd have to make sure that person
doesn't in some way mis-use them. OTOH, if *everyone* owns the rights,
there's no mis-use possible. If one person has all the rights, we'd need
that person to sign a contract saying that he/she will keep it availale to
us, or else we'd suddenly get sued for using their code. It's
number-crunching:
a) one owner:
n contracts where people submitting code transfer rights to maintainer
1 contract where maintainer states he will transfer the rights to other
people on the list if they wish
(1 contract to transfer the rights the maintainer accumulated to another
maintainer)
(1 contract to transfer the rights to someone who forks)
b) infinite owners:
n contracts where people submitting code give up their rights and make
their code PD
The less contracts involved, the less chances we have for screwing up and
getting into legal troble.
>That's what I said! _Please_ read the proposal.
I just wanted to tell you I agreed. I've read the proposal.
>> Here I disagree. There shouldn't be such ownership. Who does the work,
>>decides what happens. Since everyone has a local copy, when his changes are
>>undone by someone else, he can take away with his changes if he wants to,
>>or convince the other his changes are better.
>
>There must be someone who can say "this is OpenCard," less there be 40
>products all saying "this is OpenCard."
>All I'm saying is that I get to say "This is Interpreter", but you can
>certainly change it and say "This is Uli's Interpreter".
>I'm trying to avoid different forks -- and thus different pruducts -- being
>called the same thing.
I appreciate your efforts, but remember ownership of the code has nothing
to do with ownership of the name. The OpenCard name will be owned by us,
and only us, just like the "Interpreter" name will be owned by you
(although ... I don't think this generic word can be trademarked properly).
The code should be free, the name should be owned by the maintainer or this
list, whatever can be achieved more safely and easily.
>Read the proposal. It is a "copyleft" licence (though not a virus, like the
>FPL varients).
No, it isn't. You transfer all the rights to one person and have that one
person stand for the freedom of the source. To me it seems as if this is
too dangerous and complicated. It's like the problem with not having the
different branches in a state. Prove to me it's not dangerous and I'm on.
>Copyleft is ownership -- it used the copyright system to allow others to
>modify it.
Yes. But why transfer the rights to a maintainer when you give them up
immediately after that? We'd better just have anyone who submits something
sign a contract that they irrevocably grant everyone to change/use the code
and derivates of it, and the compiled version, giving the code isn't sold.
This would be much easier if there's no loophole in the law that prevents
this.
>I think I've covered bug fixes -- that's what all the stuff about who has
>legal ownership is for.
Well, if the maintainter gets ownership of everything, yes, bug fixes are
covered then. But again, wouldn't giving up copyright yourself be much
easier to achieve?
>In other words, make the whole thing public domain?
>That could be done, but then we'd really need a trademark to prevent the
>40-different-OpenCard's scenario.
We wouldn't necessarily need a trademark. If you use a name before the
person who registeres the trademark uses it, you have the rights to it, and
can claim the other person wants to misuse your brand name even without
having registered it (I hope it's like that in the US, too). Trademarks
just make it easier, but if you can prove you had it by June '84, even the
person registering a trademark in July '85 can't take your name from you.
But you're right, we'd have to prevent people from using the name. But we
could do this with a simple clause in OpenCard's EULA resp. the licence for
the code. This licence would basically say: The code is yours, the name is
ours.
Cheers,
-- M. Uli Kusterer
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