> I would say that the copyright would be on the patch itself and not on the
> contribution. Therefore, once the patch had been contributed and checked
> into CVS, if there was no copyright explicitly mentioned in the patch, then
> the original owner is assumed to be giving up the copyright.
The key words there are "I would say that." And that would be your
expert legal opinion, based on years of experience with intellectual
property law?
While what you say sounds reasonable and sensible, its not necessarily
what the law says. (I can think of several very good reasons why
you're an engineer and not a lawyer, as I'm sure can you.)
> It takes effort to create a patch and send it in or check it into CVS. If
> someone can make the effort to go through that trouble, then they can also
> make sure to put a copyright on the contribution if they feel that they
> deserve ownership of that patch.
Again, a reasonable argument you could make in court, and you might
even prevail, but you might not, and as far as I know there's no basis
in the law for such a presumption. In the case of GPL/LGPL projects,
a strong counterargument could be made that there is a prevailing
presumption in the GNU community that you own whatever you contribute,
with or without a copyright notice, and that the GPL reduces the
requirement to explicitly state copyright. That's also a credible
argument that might also convince a judge.
Of course, this is moot unless challenged in court -- which it won't
be. But if it is, the answer is far from obvious and the simplistic
argument that "you didn't label it as such, ergo you must have meant
to donate it" is far from a slam dunk. But my point was, and still
is, that copyright law is more complicated than you give it credit
for.
Since we don't disagree that it makes sense to get permission from the
individuals involved, and there are not many of them and thus should
be easy to do, I think the rest of the list is probably not all that
interested in continuing to hear the fine points, but I'd be happy to
continue this discussion over pints any time.
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