Erik Trimble <[email protected]> wrote: > > Ask Simon Phipps.... He told me that there is a paper from Eric Raymonds > > wife > > (who is a lawyer) that confirms my statement. > > > > The background in the European law is that a minor contributor does not get > > the right to control the "way of marketing" and the coice of the license > > is (in a OSS project) the "way of marketing". Minor contributors only have > > the right to receive a fractional part of the revenue from marketing the > > software but cannot control how this is done. > > > > Jörg > > > > > Nope. US law has no concept of insignificant contributution - if your > contribution is part of the whole, your permission has to be sought for > any use of YOUR material. The sole exceptions revolve around > critique/parody/et al where your material is either being cited, a > small excerpt quoted for reference/comparison/criticism/et al, or the > material is being parodied.
Again: please ask Simon Phipps for correct background information. > The 3 IP lawyers were very clear on that concept with me - copyrighted > material is OWNED, in the same way someone OWNS a car; I can't Even the US law has a concept that allows to claim Copyright only if the contribution is based on a significant own creation. If your contribution is below that, it is even illegal to claim own Copyright. It may be that this is the background of the paper. > That paper would seem to be an interesting legal theory, but it would > have to be argued. Case law is on the other side. I did never see it, so I am also interested in a copy of this paper ;-) I did try hard to find it in the net some time ago to no avail. > Which reminds me: is Germany a Civil law or Common Law country? Germany of course is a Civil law Country and there is an interesting side effect from the fact that the UK still uses Common law. The Copyright law in the UK is in conflict with the European Copyright law and the UK has already been admonished by the European community for their non-compliance. If any European Citizen suffers a detriment from the non-compliant UK Copyright law, he can sue the UK government for compensation at the European court. Now we are way off-topic. Jörg -- EMail:[email protected] (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin [email protected] (uni) [email protected] (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
