Copyright is different than rights in a material object. My sending you a copy of my code, or letting you clone a codebase of mine, does not constitute transfer of copyright. None. Never. Even if I could take the code back (which is difficult to do since it is not physical property in the legal sense and the ASF did not steal it), it would not cancel the license. (There is provision for rescinding a license, but it never applies to code already contributed. It is not retroactive.)
The fact that code was transferred simply established what the SGA applied to. There is also no deed of a material object in the SGA, CCLA, and iCLA. Peter gets to keep his copy and do whatever he wants with it. He did not transfer ownership of the code. Arguments based on handling of material objects just don't work here. There's a clause about that in the US Copyright Code, <http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap2.html>. See section 202 which covers these cases. And section 201(c) is relevant to what the ASF asserts with a copyright notice. One of the responsibilities of a [P]PMC is assurance that these IP niceties are dealt with properly within the parameters for their fulfilment established by the ASF. - Dennis -----Original Message----- From: jan i [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, February 13, 2015 03:14 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Copyright notices On 13 February 2015 at 11:49, Peter Kelly <[email protected]> wrote: > > The ICLA transfers ownership to Apache > > This is contrary to my understanding. In section 2 ("Grant of Copyright > License”) of the ICLA it specifically says that the signer agrees to > *license* the code to Apache; I understood this as not indicating transfer > of *ownership*. If ownership transfer was taking place, it seems the > license grant would be unnecessary? > The world starts a bit different, you donated the code to ASF, you did not just give ASF a right to use. [ ... ]
