On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 4:15 PM, Raj Mathur <r...@linux-delhi.org> wrote: > On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 1:16 PM, Gora Mohanty <g...@sarai.net> wrote: >> Copyright is entirely distinct from licensing. If I write a piece >> of code, or acquire copyright over it by some other means, I can >> choose to license it to whomever, under whatever conditions I deem >> fit. >> >> Legal eagles can chip in, but roughly speaking, copyright has to do >> with ownership, while a licence has to do with what terms and >> conditions that you allow other people to use things under. > > Not a legal (or any other specie, genus or phylum) of eagle, but > technically you may own copyright to a work without having the rights > to license it. For instance, when you write a book, the copyright > vests with you but the licence to redistribute is with the publisher. > I'm also not too clear on how that works, but practically that's what > you end up with: copyright with one person, licensing rights with > another. >
It is not necessary that the author keeps the copyrights himself. The publishing and distribution is another ball game. eg. Raj Mathur can write a book and give copyrights to IlugD. IlugD will then give publishing rights to the publisher. Publisher may give distribution rights to various agencies may be according to various criteria like statewise, sectorwise (academic, commercial, students, libraries etc) and so on. As such, author, copyright holder, publisher, distributor can be differeent entities having different roles and bound by their contracts with the concerned parties. I hope the situation is clear from this example. Regards, -Sudhanwa _______________________________________________ Ilugd mailing list Ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
