Ross Gardler wrote: > 2009/12/5 Behdad Esfahbod <beh...@behdad.org>: > > On 12/05/2009 03:32 PM, Ross Gardler wrote: > >> CLAs are not about assignment of copyright form one party to another. > > > > Let me correct you: they are not *necessarily* about copyright assignment. > > In real world however, more often than not, they are. > > Your addition of the world "necessarily" is correct. > > But I do not agree with your assertion: > ASF, Mozilla, FSF, Eclipse, Plone, Python, Subversion, Debian, Ubuntu > and Linux (for example) do not require copyright assignment.
FSF's position is at http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Copyright-Papers.html#Copyright-Papers and looks to me like it requires either assignment or disclamation. So, while technically accurate to say FSF doesn't require assignment, there seems no choice for contributors to retain their copyright, which I think is why some actually detest copyright assignment. There's also a special sub-problem for those in Common Ownership organisations (so-called Asset-Locked or anti-carpetbagged groups), because their assets should not be distributed except to another CO org. A similar variation applies in some countries where natural persons cannot assign some of their rights, as I understand it. Return-to-author licensing agreements seem much better, such as the FSFE-developed FLA. If a project is undecided or unknowing, is it a good idea to suggest they take a look at the FLA? http://fsfe.org/projects/ftf/fla.en.html Regards, -- MJ Ray (slef) Webmaster and LMS developer at | software www.software.coop http://mjr.towers.org.uk | .... co IMO only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html | .... op _______________________________________________ tos mailing list tos@teachingopensource.org http://teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos
