Re: Evolution copyright assignment: Storm in a teacup

[Sriram Ramkrishna <sri aracnet com>]

On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 09:14:19PM +0100, Rui Miguel Seabra wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-08-06 at 13:01 -0700, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote:
> > So, let me get this straight.  You're position is that by assigning 
> > copyright to a single entity that entity; be it whomever, can relicense
> > to the code as propriety or something non-GPL correct?
> 
> No. They can do that because you agree to let them do that by signing
> that contract.

Sure.  But you can negiotate that youre code can only go into the
GPL'd version or it can't be made proprietary.  You have that power
becuase it's you're code.  If entity decides they don't want it they are
free to re-write it and take yours out.

> > Do you believe that they can do this despite a legal agreement that the
> > code will be licensed as free software in addition to proprietary?
> 
> It's not despite it. It's because of it. And there's no "addition":
> 2.1 might be some Free Software license, 2.2 might be 100% proprietary.
> After all, 2.1 already made available under a Free Software license.

But the agreement between developer and entity says 'I agree that my code
can be licensed GPL'd and proprietary but it cannot just be proprietary'.
Wuld that satisify you?  Especially if the agreement is enforceable by
law?

> 
> > A legal agreement is binding.  An entity is obligated by law to follow
> > through.
> 
> Yes.
> 
> > I'm not seeing where the license is being circumvented.
> 
> Simple. You can't circunvent it if you don't own all the copyrights.
> So you collect them all in order to have the right to do it.
> 
> And in One Assignment, bind them.

You seem to consider conslidation into one entity as a bad thing.
The FSF wants to do the same thing here.  They would wish us to
assign copyright to the FSF.  Are you willing to come to the 
<some country> to defend your code/copyright against all legal 
attacks?  Conslidation helps a project be able to defend their code
base against attacks.

You also believe that once it's out of your hands you're screwed.
Thats not necessarily true.  What if the FSF were to come up with
a boiler plate agreement that are looked over by it's lawyers would
you use that agreement when assigning code over?

> 
> >   The only reason
> > I can see you saying that is that you're being a purist and do not want
> > any proprietary forks associated the original GPL'd codebase regardless
> > of whether the code is also GPL'd as well.  Is that your position?
> 
> That's not puritanism. It's the intention of the GPL.

I think I understand now.  You're taking a hardline stance that
there is no room for any other licenses once GPL license has been
slapped on.  Since the spirit of the GPL is meant to keep the source
code free it's not meant to have the whole code base forked over to a
proprietary license even though that code has a GPL'd equivalent
because once that relicensed code is proprietary it can be used for 
profit.  Commits to the "proprietary version" would not be shared
with the community and the GPL'd one could stagnate since 90% of 
code is being worked on by Novell employee.  Interesting..

The difference, as I see it is that I think people see the evolution
code base as one entity, and there would not be a seperate code base
for proprietary hacks.  Secondly, it might be that nobody cares about
the proprietary version expecting that the GPL'd version is the true
version anyways.

sri