On Wed, Jul 28, 1999 at 02:02:38AM -0400, Paul D. Smith wrote > %% Carl Mummert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > cm> Who owns patches? > > The person who wrote it always "owns" it... sort of. The patch can be > argued to be a derived work of the original, so in a sense the author > might not own it entirely. > > cm> When a patch is integrated into the main product, doesn't the new > cm> code incorporated from the patch become property of the original > cm> owner? > > No. The main product now becomes a derived work of both authors. > That's the easy answer. The more complex answer is only a court could > ultimately decide it, and they may take into consideration various > factors such as the size of the patch, importance to the whole, etc. >
The patch has to be "significant" and "creative" enough to merit protection in its own right; for instance, if someone noticed that the original author was passing the wrong argument to a system call and corrected the apparent error that probably *wouldn't* be considered worthy of protection, and wouldn't have any effect on the ownership of the patched source. >[snip] IANAL, John P. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Oh - I - you know - my job is to fear everything." - Bill Gates in Denmark
