On Sun, Jun 06, 2004 at 11:27:46AM +1000, Mary Gardiner wrote: > On Sun, Jun 06, 2004, Matthew Palmer wrote: > > From my understanding, there can only be one copyright holder over a > > specific creative work. When two or more entities both claim > > copyright over a work, they're actually claiming rights over different > > parts of the work. Identifying whose parts are whose isn't always > > possible, but that's not an issue in the case under discussion. > > Many many FOSS projects with commericial partners are pioneering "Joint > Copyright Agreements", see for example: > > http://www.netbeans.org/about/legal/jca.html
Of more interest is the meat of the agreement itself, which mentions "Joint Ownership in all worldwide common law and statutory right associated with the copyrights [...]", and then later states "Contributor retains the right to use the Contribution for Contributor's own purposes". Smells like you're handing Sun the copyright, and they're giving you back an unlimited (presumably, but not explicitly, transferrable) "anything goes" licence. In the FAQ they do mention getting your name put into the copyright credits for the work your contribution is made to, but the FAQ says that's "not practical". I'd be worried about signing over my copyrights to any commercial entity without a much clearer statement of what, exactly, I was signing over and what I retained. The problem with "Joint Ownership" of a copyrightable work is the issue of standing to contest. Who has the right to bring suit for copyright violation? If I have "joint ownership" of a work, can either of the "owners" sue a violator? Does it take agreement of both owners? Can both "owners" bring suit separately, so that the violator has to fight two suits for the one infringement? Strength in suit is one of the reasons some projects require copyright assignment, but having "joint ownership" erodes all of that. You'll spend half your time arguing about issues of standing. - Matt -- All I care about [a linux distro] is it detect my hardware (non-Debian strengths), and teach me to fish instead of just giving me a smelly old fish (most people 'xcept Debian), and I guess don't just give me a fish biology textbook (gentoo). -- Tom (in d-devel) -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
