Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Mon, 21 Oct 2002 01:32:47 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Mon, 21 Oct 2002 01:32:46 -0400 Received: from pimout3-ext.prodigy.net ([207.115.63.102]:32242 "EHLO pimout3-ext.prodigy.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id convert rfc822-to-8bit; Mon, 21 Oct 2002 01:32:45 -0400 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII From: Rob Landley Reply-To: landley@trommello.org To: Daniel Berlin , Robert Love Subject: Re: Bitkeeper outrage, old and new Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2002 19:38:49 -0500 User-Agent: KMail/1.4.3 Cc: Xavier Bestel , Ben Collins , Jeff Garzik , Linux Kernel Mailing List References: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Message-Id: <200210201938.49090.landley@trommello.org> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2212 Lines: 47 On Sunday 20 October 2002 18:04, Daniel Berlin wrote: > On 20 Oct 2002, Robert Love wrote: > > On Sun, 2002-10-20 at 18:52, Daniel Berlin wrote: > > > On Sunday, October 20, 2002, at 05:51 PM, Robert Love wrote: > > > > It is called copyright _assignment_ for a reason. How the hell are > > > > two people supposed to simultaneously own a copyright on the same > > > > work? > > > > > > Joint authorship. > > > > The FSF Copyright Assignment is not joint authorship, it is copyright > > assignment. They alone possess the work's copyright. > > Of course. > But you asked "How the hell are two people supposed to simultaneously own > a copyright on the same work?" > The answer is "Joint authorship". An analogous legal concept, for those of you who have taken a community college business law course (and if you haven't, it might be a good idea), is the partnership. See "joint and several liability". (There's a reason they invented the corporation...) As far as I understand, joint authorship does not apply to the linux kernel because the contributors are operating under a license to an existing work rather than an up-front collaboration between partners to produce a specific good. (Joint authorship pretty much happens up-front.) The fact the contributors largely don't know each other, and that patches are discrete entities which may be individually tracked (and thus individually owned), work in here too. It's more like designing and manufacturing spider man collector cups. The drawing on the cup is a new copyrightable item, but the character being portrayed is a licensed entity. A license to put your own drawing of spider-man on a plastic cup doesn't give you the right to turn around and stick that drawing on pajamas and bath towels, even though it's your drawing which you have a copyright on. In this kind of collaboration, you must have compatable licenses for the components... I am not, of course, a lawyer. :) Rob - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/