Re: Documentation License

[Luis Villa <luis tieguy org>]

On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 3:21 AM, Matthew East <mdke ubuntu com> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 3:44 AM, Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org> wrote:
>> On Sun, 2009-04-26 at 22:28 -0400, Luis Villa wrote:
>>> On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 10:57 AM, Matthew East <mdke ubuntu com> wrote:
>>>
>>> <snip discussion of dual-licensing; I can't speak to whether or not
>>> docs will need to be completely rewritten or not>
>>>
>>> > For the future I'd also suggest that contributors automatically assign
>>> > copyright in the material they produce to the members of a specific
>>> > and identifiable gnome-doc group or the Gnome Foundation to enable
>>> > copyright transitions to be smoother.
>>>
>>> This is not a bad idea; that said at the moment the Foundation doesn't
>>> have much (read: any) infrastructure for this.
>>
>> IANAL (but Luis almost is), but I don't think you can
>> "automatically" assign copyright.  Contributors would
>> have to sign something and send it in.
>
> Well, I'm a lawyer, but I don't think it's relevant: no one of us is
> going to be an expert in copyright laws of all the possible countries
> that Gnome contributors could be from. I think it's sufficient to take
> a practical and reasonable view.
>
> I think that it would be practical and reasonable to have a part of
> the copyright notice that states that copyright is held by (e.g.) the
> current members of the Gnome documentation team[1] and just to ensure
> that new contributors are aware that part of submitting their work is
> that the copyright is held by that group, and that when they leave the
> group, the copyright remains in the group. No more, no less than will
> be done for making contributors aware of the license that their work
> is released under (we don't require a signature for that). I don't see
> that as a barrier to contribution.

At least under US law, choosing a license for something you own the
copyright in and assigning copyright ownership to someone else are two
very different things. The latter, explicitly by law (17 USC 204(a)),
requires that:

"A transfer of copyright ownership ... is not valid unless an
instrument of conveyance, or a note or memorandum of the transfer, is
in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed or such
owner's duly authorized agent."[1]

UK law has a similar provision (UK Copyright, Design and Patents Act
1988, s. 90(3).)

Like you said, we can't be experts on all the various copyright laws
that might have effect, but under both US and UK law taking assignment
in this way would be facially invalid, and it'd be irresponsible to
give advice that ignored the law of the jurisdiction that hosts the
project and many (most, counting corporate contributions owned by US
corporations?) of its contributors.

That said, there may be very low overhead ways we could do this- on
re-reading the law, I think it may be valid in the US merely to accept
and apply a patch to a centralized copyright document that constitutes
a 'signature' under the US E-Sign act. I'll consult with real lawyers
on the state of the art in low-overhead (c) assignment.

Luis

[1] good discussion about whether or not an email qualifies as a
written instrument of conveyance here:
http://onlinepublishinglaw.com/may-a-copyright-be-transferred-electronically/