On Wed, 2008-02-06 at 16:31 +0100, Frank Schönheit - Sun Microsystems
Germany wrote:
> Hi Michael,
>
> > OpenOffice project code:
> > Sun the only owner: 100%
> > LGPL eclectic (or better) ownership: 0%
>
> the "only" is plain not true, as you very well now. The term is *Joint*
> copyright Assignment. You don't do your standing a good with repeating
> wrong facts.
The problem with such Joint copyright ownership is that it leaves the
potential for a "everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others"
environment.
In this case, everyone has LGPL access to the source code ("everyone is
equal"), but Sun has rights that no one else enjoys, such as the ability
to release binary-only versions of OpenOffice.org (Star Office), or to
license OpenOffice.org sources to a 3rd party outside of the LGPL.
(This was the point to Michael's query about Butler Office -- for all we
knew, Butler *had* a license from Sun to release it, and there's nothing
anyone could have done about it it. We now know from Martin that this
isn't the case. However, we also have no assurance that Butler won't
offer [insert obscene amount of money here] to Sun for a proprietary
license to the code, and Sun wold be fully within their rights to accept
this offer. Would Sun accept such an offer? Probably not today. But
in 10-20 years, under new management? Who can say?)
*This* is the primary problem with copyright assignments, and why
projects requiring them historically haven't done as well as projects
that don't require copyright assignments. In general, people don't like
a "some are more equal than others" environment, and avoid them.
A "solution" to this would be a JCA that explicitly states that the
contributed code will only be usable under the LGPL or another open
source license; at least this way the "more equal than others"
capabilities would be limited, thus keeping them less "more equal than
others."
A related problem with the "Joint" copyright assignment is that the
contributor does not have copyright ownership of all improvements made
to that code. This further promotes the "some are more equal than
others" motif, as the original contributor effectively retains only
LGPL access to their own work (if they're at all interested in any
improvements, which one assumes they would be).
As for Gnome and the FSF, and this should be obvious, their requirements
for copyright assignment (or lack thereof in the case of Gnome) really
aren't relevant here, as neither organization is a commercial entity,
beholden to stockholders that insist they be ever more profitable. Sun
*is* a commercial entity, *is* beholden to stockholders, and thus Sun's
behavior isn't as readily comparable. (Rather like Microsoft having a
monopoly in operating systems doesn't prevent Apple or Linux from
bundling ever more software with their systems -- rules that apply to
one group do not necessarily apply to the other.) Again, this should be
obvious, but apparently isn't.
- Jon
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