[Sussex] GPL and copyright

[Geoffrey Teale]

On Wednesday 06 July 2005 14:49, Paul Tansom wrote:

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Here goes...

> "Our lawyers have told us that to be in the best position to enforce the
> GPL in court against violators, we should keep the copyright status of
> the program as simple as possible. We do this by asking each contributor
> to either assign the copyright on his contribution to the FSF, or
> disclaim copyright on it and thus put it in the public domain."
>
> OK, it makes sense that to keep things simple there is a single entity
> owning copyright, but how can this work in practise? 

If you are always assigning copyright to the FSF it doesn't create an issue, 
your later points are predicated on a different situation.

> For example, I've 
> found this on a GPL project website (I'll remove the project details
> since the specifics of the project are not the issue):
>
> "Contributors agree to relinquish copyright to the [Project] Development
> team.
>
> Before any submission is accepted for the standard distribution, the
> contributor is asked to hand over copyright to [persons name] and the
> [employer]. While some people think this infringes on the rights of the
> contributor, and goes against the philosophy of Open Source software, it
> doesn't. First of all, no one is forcing contributors to assign
> copyright to us -- if someone wants to maintain that control, their code
> doesn't go into the standard distribution. Secondly, the [Project]
> developers are only in a position to license and distribute code if they
> legally own copyright."

I know of more than one project likes this, CUPS is a good example.

This is the main reason why my CUPS drivers are not in the main distribution.

>
> So, take a simple examples:
>
> o You work on two GPL projects and use a common section of code on each
> - how can you assign copyright to both? Nope? Scuppered!

Indeed, but if both projects would accept FSF copyright then you are OK.  I 
would be very suspicious of the motivation of anyone who requires you to hand 
them copyright  - the only difference to them is that they can then choose to 
license that code under another license (i.e. not GPL, which is what the CUPS 
guys are up to) .

>
> o You produce some software that you use for your own business and
> customers, but that you publish under the GPL, you also use the same
> code (it is GPL after all) in a GPL project - does it make sense to
> assign copyright of code you use for your business (I'm thinking self
> employed here, working for a larger company adds new complications no
> doubt!) to a third party (whoever that is).

Dual licensing can only be done by the holder of the copyright - a user of the 
GPL code is explicitly denied the right to apply a different license to the 
code or any derived work.  If you hand copyright to the FSF then you must 
realise that you will not be able to use your code outside the terms of the 
GPL - this would provent its use in non-GPL software.

> Is this practise common amongst GPL projects? 

Only ones run by companies that want to make proprietary versions of open 
source software.  Generally its a sign that you want to ask serious questions 
before submitting code to such projects.

> Do they look to assign 
> copyright to the FSF or themselves (I note this project works with the
> project leader and his employer, although I believe he has now moved
> jobs, so what happens there I don't know!).

Assigning copyright to the FSF is perfectly safe unless you wish to use the 
code in non-GPL projects (which is your right as the copyright holder).  

> As I said, I can see the logic in the simplistic approach of defending
> the GPL legally, but I can see all sorts of practical problems in
> sharing code between projects - unless the FSF ends up building up a
> massive ownership of copyright over just about every piece of GPL code
> in existence!

Assigning to the FSF avoids a lot of complexity if you intend the code to be 
truly free, otherwise I'd keep hold of it.  

> As ever with the legal issues surrounding free software I'm finding it
> tough to get my head around - the principle is simple, the practicality
> in the corporate money driven society is not so :(

No, it really is simple.  Assign copyright to whomever you wish to have 
control of the licensing, don't hand code to projects that want you to assign 
copyright to them unless you are happy to lose control of licensing.  

I'll reiterate that handing it to the FSF is completely safe so long as you 
don't wish to use your code in non-GPL applications.

-- 
Geoffrey Teale
Cmed Research  // Free Software Foundation