On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 15:50, Dennis E. Hamilton <dennis.hamil...@acm.org> wrote: >... > If I am the copyright holder of my code, I can issue it with a license that > requires anyone who modifies my source code to provide me with the changes to > my code that they make.
No, you cannot. Copyright Law applies to certain actions taken with copyrighted works. In particular, as the copyright holder you have certain exclusive rights. For US law, please refer to [1]. When you grant a license, you allow the recipient to also have those rights, under your terms. "Use" of your copyrighted work and "modification" are not one of your exclusive rights. You cannot force a recipient to follow your terms when they perform those actions. The first three of those rights (reproduce, produce derivatives, and distribute) are the rights generally used in the FLOSS world[2]. Somebody simply making modifcations in private does not fall under those actions, so you have no way to force a recipient to return those changes to you. For that... you must resort to Contract Law, which is something entirely different. (and that is what EULAs attempt to operate under, but they often run into problems around "both parties agreeing to the contract"). Cheers, -g [1] http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#106 [2] people have also tried to use "public performance" and "display" to apply restrictions; see the AGPL -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
