In order to license anything, even license under GPL, it MUST be
copyrighted.
ONLY a copyright holder can prosecute someone for violating any license,
even GPL.
Essentially, under current US/Europe/&c. laws, at the moment you create
something, unless it is a "work made for hire" where you have (in advance)
signed away the rights to your "future" creation, you hold copyright on it.
In most countries, you can then register this copyright (in the US, with our
Library of Congress), but it's not strictly necessary as long as you can
prove that you're the original author (e.g. simply posting an MD5 checksum
to USENET might well do it).
At that moment, no one else can use the software (publish the book, play the
song, &c.) unless you give them license to do so. The GPL gives *everyone*
license to do so, but prevents them from further restricting the rights of
"down-wind" recipients. The BSD license *does* allow certain restrictions
upon the rights of "down-wind" recipients, but requires proper
credit/attribution/blame to be given. Typical proprietary licenses give the
user very limited rights only; e.g. "you may run this on one computer only,
and make one back-up copy, and may not give this to anyone else" &c.
So: If you do not copyright your work, you cannot license it; it is in the
public domain. This means anyone can do anything with it, to include:
* simply passing it on
* licensing it under the terms of their choice (to possibly
include either an open source or proprietary
license), then passing it on and/or selling it
* incorporating it into a product of their own
Who gets the copyright is largely your call. Remember, however, only
copyright holders can prosecute someone for violating a license, e.g. GPL.
There's an interesting discussion of this point at http://www.OpenOffice.Org
- which requires that OpenOffice contributors assign their copyright to Sun
Microsystems so that Sun can prosecute violators more easily. OTOH, the
Linux kernel is (IIRC) copyrighted by each author as a collective work?
Really, once it's under the GPL, just make certain that the holder of the
copyright is willing to actually press charges, and it won't matter who
holds it +/- since everyone has the right to use it still (i.e. it can never
be made non-GPL); OTOH, under a BSD or MPL license, a "mean-spirited" person
might take the open source program and create a proprietary version of it,
"hiding" future developments from the public, so the holder of the copyright
is under a greater onus.
-----Original Message-----
From: John S. Gage [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Superb posting. What about "copyleft"?
If it is possible, would you be willing to give us some more details?
What does the group think about copyright? Copyright won versus
Napster, as it should have.
>I have been debating the use of copyright with my mentor.
>
>I say I copyright the work I do and offer it to others under the GPL
>to control usage.
>He says it should not be copyrighted, rather just offered to others under
GPL.
>
>When I go to work officially for his organization, do I keep my
>personal copyright?
>Or do I assign copyright for past and new work to his organization?
>
>Appreciate hearing what others do.
>
>Thanks.
>Bruce Slater
