I'm no lawyer, but you can never 'take' over the copyright without a legal agreement (or otherwise imply that OpenWrt is the sole copyright holder). As far as I know, you can 'add' a copyright right notice, but that still doesn't diminish the original authors rights to the contribution. With makesfiles in particular, it could be argued that they are derivatives (copied and modified) of some other makefile, so they are released under the GPL as required - but still doesn't mean OpenWrt 'owns' the work. Of course, this is only really an issue if your intention is to commercially license these works (contributions) to parties which can then modify them and release under something other than the GPL. Is that the case? If not, then I don't think it matters much. Personally, I don't think OpenWrt should insert copyright notices on things it doesn't have copyright over. At best, perhaps a "Part of OpenWrt" or "OpenWrt is a trademark of blah blah" notices.
Just my 2 cents.... David On Jul 26, 2007, at 3:41 PM, Gregers Petersen wrote: > > > Florian Fainelli wrote: >> Hi devs, >> >> We received quite a lot of contributions that got merged to our >> subversion >> repository. I was wondering how we should treat those contributions, >> especially Makefiles. >> >> Shall we have a double copyright, both OpenWrt and the original >> author, or >> just the OpenWrt copyright, since by submitting the Makefile they >> agreed on >> us taking copyright on it. >> >> Thank you very much for your clarification. >> > > In as much as the various contribution are being added to the > subversion > repository it would seem odd if the OpenWrt project didn't "take" over > the copyright, through the public declaring of ownership. The > respective > contributors would continue being included in the credits-list, and in > this way it is a simple task of looking-up the 'biography' of the > particular pieces. > > Though, I think it would be a good thing to specify that it is the > OpenWrt Project and not the devs who are declaring ownership - devs > come > and go (this is not spoken in any critical sense, just a reference to > the fact of life that time does not stand still) - so I think it is > important to be clear about that the project claims ownership and not > 'us' (as in devs, or singular individuals). > I can sometimes be picky about how words are being used (sorry for > this). > > > > -- > Gregers Petersen, Anthropologist > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > www.wireless-ownership.org > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > _______________________________________________ > openwrt-devel mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.openwrt.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel _______________________________________________ openwrt-devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openwrt.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel
