Re: copyrights assignments

[kelly poverty bloomington in us]

On Sun, 23 Jul 2000 13:05:14 +0300, Ali Abdin <aliabdin@aucegypt.edu> said:

>Well - when I hack on something that has the copyright to someone
>else (like Eazel Inc.) I 'assume' that by not adding myself I am
>relinquishing my 'copyright' claims. Is this legal? or do papers need
>to be signed (like the FSF do) ?

You do not relinquish your copyright merely by failing to notice it.
In the US, at least, transfers of copyright must be expressed in
writing and signed by the transferor.  Releasing a copyright to the
public domain may have different requirements, but a contributor to a
GPLed product cannot release a derivation to the public domain anyway
(doing so is precluded by the GPL's licensure terms).

Kelly