Re: Copyright assignment

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Tue, 2004-08-03 at 20:00, Sander Vesik wrote:
>  --- Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org> wrote: 
> > On Tue, 2004-08-03 at 19:05 -0400, Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > > 
> > > > In general, having say sign five legal letters to be able to hack on all parts
> > of
> > > > desktop would be rather limiting. So really, it would be nice if the general
> > policy
> > > > was that such assignment requirements are and contiunue to be very much
> > > > unacceptable. Foundation getting its act together and offering a way to assign
> > > > copyrights to itself would also help to remove problems with the single
> > assignment
> > > > related concern GNOME should be concewrned about, that is licencing integrity.
> > 
> > > > 
> > > > Having a futuire written policy of "there is no copyright assignment needed or
> > such
> > > > will be assigned to the foundation" would be good.
> > > 
> > > Various companies that fund work might have different reasons to keep
> > > copyright ownership over their code.  OpenOffice will likely continue
> > > to require copyright assignment, so will Evolution, so will Real and as
> > > a strategy to get folks to open source their technologies, I will
> > > personally continue to encourage companies to open source software and
> > > ask for copyright assignment as a way of keeping a bit of a leverage.
> > > 
> > > Not the ideal situation, but in the past it has opened the doors for
> > > more free software to be available.
> > > 
> > > Is it a problem to sign five pieces of paper to get your code
> > > contributed?  Very likely, but how many people are practically involved
> > > in all of these projects in a day-to-day basis?
> > 
> > The translation and documentation teams come to mind.  I really have no
> > idea how copyright works with respect to translations, but I do know
> > that major documentation contributors hold copyrights.  Is copyright
> > assignment required for documentation contributions as well?
> > 
> 
> There is no general answer here. It might be documentation is a separate "package"
> and doesn't, same for translations - or it might be they do. If teh module is set up
> as gnome presently is, then probably "yes" to both. 

Of course, and I wasn't asking for a general answer.  I'm asking very
specifically about the Evolution documentation.  Sorry if that wasn't
clear.

So, does Novell require copyright assignment for contributions to the
Evolution documentation?  While Novell has a good team of technical
writers that do a fine job with the Evolution docs, I don't want to set
a precedant with this sort of thing.

Documentation has a different dynamic than code.  Programmers tend to
work mostly on one or two projects, and they're very devoted to those
projects.  In the documentation team, we've got half a dozen people who
will work on all of the docs.  And we might have a completely different
half a dozen people on the next release cycle.

Requiring copyright assignment for documentation would seriously hinder
the documentation team's ability to do its job.

--
Shaun