On 2013-07-19, at 11:31 PM, John Cowan <co...@mercury.ccil.org> wrote:
> Ben Reser scripsit: > >> This is an important point. The only way the copyright owner isn't >> special for an *overall* *work* (emphasis is important) is if there >> are so many copyright holders that it becomes impossible to get them >> all to agree to change the license (e.g. Linux Kernel). Especially, >> when the work is so intertwined the individual contributions are not >> particular worthwhile independently (the copyright owner is obviously >> always special for the work they did themselves). > > In that case, the work is probably a joint work, defined by the > U.S. copyright act as "a work prepared by two or more authors with > the intention that their contributions be merged into inseparable or > interdependent parts of a unitary whole." > > In a joint work, *any* author can change the license under which the work > may be exploited, contrary to the folk theory that says *all* authors > must agree. However, the proceeds, if any, must be divided equally > among all the authors. In this case, of course, there are no proceeds. Well, I think that many would argue that such a work is a collective, rather than a joint work. In fact, it seems to me that most of the large collaborative communities are running under that assumption. _______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
