Re: Copyright assignment

[Miguel de Icaza <miguel ximian com>]

Hello,

> One important question that needs to be answered here:  If Novell has no
> interest in claiming proprietary interest in Evolution code, why do they
> require copyright assignment?

I can not speak for Evolution, but I can speak for Mono, another
component that we own the copyright to.

We want to keep the copyright for various reasons:

	* We can relicense the code to someone on proprietary terms.

	* We can defend effectively the copyright if it is miss-used.

	* It allows us to build proprietary features if we choose to.

That being said, in the context of Evolution being part of the GNOME
platform and looking at the worst possible case: if the owner of
Evolution would ever decide something that the community does not agree
with, or decides to invest purely on a proprietary version, the
community has the power to fork it.

>From Novell's position, so far we have opened plenty of code: iFolder,
Simias, Yast, Evolution connector and its a trend that does not seem to
be stopping at this point.

Copyright ownership gives us a small competitive advantage (at this
point mostly not exercised ;-) for all the money and resources
that are spent on projects that can be reused by anyone in the
community as well as our business competitors.

I would not be too scared about it.   Today am working for Novell,
because I believe in what we are doing here with free software, but I
have a deeper commitment to the free software movement, and in the past
I have encouraged people to sign off copyright to projects that are
owned by companies that have contributed to get us where we are today.

Miguel.