Re: Documentation License

[Luis Villa <luis tieguy org>]

On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 11:35 AM, Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org> wrote:
> On Mon, 2009-04-27 at 14:35 +0100, Matthew East wrote:
>> Hi Luis,
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 2:06 PM, Luis Villa <luis tieguy org> wrote:
>> > "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).)
>>
>> Interesting - that would appear to put a block on the idea. However it
>> would be interesting to pursue the question of whether submitting
>> patches or pushing to a revision control system could be considered a
>> signature.
>>
>> Apart from anything else, if this is not possible, then it is probably
>> be necessary to rethink the current copyright declarations of the user
>> guide, which seem to purport that the copyright holders are Sun
>> Microsystems and Shaun, respectively.
>
> This is an unfortunate effect of us not being vigilant in
> ensuring contributors add copyright elements to the DocBook
> files.  I don't know the legal ramifications of copyright
> holders not stating their copyright in the document.

Under US law, they lose certain presumptions which would make it
harder to win a court case (mostly because it is harder to *prove* it
is theirs.) But it is still theirs, so both legally and morally
they're still on the high ground.

Luis