Re: Copyright assignment

[Alan Cox <alan lxorguk ukuu org uk>]

On Sul, 2004-08-08 at 01:33, Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> Probably calling it `copyright assignment form' is the wrong term;  it
> just happens to be what everyone else calls it.

It's most definitely a copyright assignment. 

> The document is a contract in which you grant permission to Novell to
> reuse your creation (you own the copyright to it) to be distributed
> under any terms that Novell wishes to in addition to the GPL version.

Another thing I am unclear about having re-read it in detail. If the
same code gets submitted to multiple projects for example open office
and evolution how will it work out.

Copyright assignments seem to have an evil side effect so far
overlooked. Since Novell would own the copyright it would no longer be
possible to contribute the same code to Open Office. Thus if Gnome
begins to accept such things the ability to reuse code is destroyed. 

Similarly it removes the ability to build on code by reuse, since the
owner of the code being reused may not wish to assign the use and cannot
viably go around assigning it to Novell, Sun and everyone else.

Since the contract says "supporting files" that appears to prohibit
submitting a patch to Evolution which uses a third party library since
that third party library is "supporting files" and the contributor does
not own it.

Alan