Re: Copyright assignment policy

["Luis Villa" <luis tieguy org>]

On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 12:05 PM, Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org> wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-03-11 at 14:24 +0200, ash contact bg wrote:
>  > Dear foundation members,
>  >
>  > What is the policy of contributing to the GNOME project and expected copyright
>  > assignment?
>  >
>  > 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.

I forgot to mention earlier that unless you've talked to the FSF and
filled out their copyright assignment forms, you have not assigned
them to FSF.

>  > I have personally contacted the individual contributors who gave me their
>  > permission (informal) to change the copyright assignments in the po-files for
>  > those translators that had retained copyright and assign that to FSF.
>  >
>  > I have acted so up till now in private conversations.
>
>  IANALTTL (I am not a lawyer, talk to Luis), but my understanding
>  is that copyright assignment requires signing a piece of paper to
>  be valid.  I don't think private email exchanges cut it, legally.

See http://onlinepublishinglaw.com/may-a-copyright-be-transferred-electronically/
for an alternative (and I think correct, but IANAL) perspective on the
issue.

Luis