Re: Copyright assignment policy

[Dave Neary <bolsh gnome org>]

Hi,

ash contact bg wrote:
> What is the policy of contributing to the GNOME project and expected copyright
> assignment?

Short answer: there is none.

Longer answer: Individual maintainers may decide that requesting
copyright assignments is a good thing. A couple of modules, I believe,
assign copyright to the FSF, and Evolution requires a copyright
assignment to Novell (ex Ximian).

> I am Alexander Shopov and I act as a co-ordinator of the Bulgarian Gnome
> translation team.
> 
> Up till now, the copyrights have been assigned to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Copyright assignments on translations is a tricky subject - what you're
doing is givng copyright for part of a larger work to a third party, but
that third party is not getting copyright on the entire work.

> Is there an official policy of copyright assignment by contributors?
> 
> Who would hold principally the copyright?

Each maintainer, developer and contributor decides who will hold the
copyright to his contributions. Sometimes, they are asked by someone to
assign copyright, and sometimes, they do assign.

> I have acted up till now from practical standpoint - a common copyright holder
> would find it actually more easy to manage and re-license code.
> 
> Furthermore - will there ever be relicensing of the software?

I doubt that very much. Relicensing GNOME would be a massive
undertaking, involving requesting permission from thousands of copyright
 holders (including several copyright holders who are not the original
hackers) and a number of large companies where getting this kind of
decision can take weeks and months of lobbying (that is, once you've
managed to find the person/persons with the power to make the decision).

Cheers,
Dave.
-- 
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
bolsh gnome org