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Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 11:18:19 -0400
Subject: Re: Bitkeeper outrage, old and new
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Cc: Rob Landley <landley@trommello.org>, Xavier Bestel <xavier.bestel@free.fr>,
       Robert Love <rml@tech9.net>, Ben Collins <bcollins@debian.org>,
       Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com>,
       Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
To: Rik van Riel <riel@conectiva.com.br>
From: Daniel Berlin <dberlin@dberlin.org>
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On Monday, October 21, 2002, at 10:33  AM, Rik van Riel wrote:

> On Sun, 20 Oct 2002, Rob Landley wrote:
>> On Sunday 20 October 2002 17:53, Rik van Riel wrote:
>
>>> Germany (and France, judging from your words) have laws that
>>> guarantee that the creator of a work keeps copyright on the
>>> work.  At least, part of the copyright cannot be signed over
>>> to other people or organisations.
>
>> 3) The creator of a work doesn't always get the copyright, at least in
>> the US.
>
> Please see above.  It's possible the FSF copyright assignment
> just can't be legal in some countries.
>
Possibly, but as a contract, it doesn't matter (unless these other  
countries don't do promissory estoppel. AFAIK from a google search,  
they do).

Even if the contract is invalid, if the FSF relies on the promise of  
rights in the contract to its detriment (IE are sued by the author for  
infringement or something), the promise will be enforced (to avoid  
injustice).

For an plain english description of what promissory estoppel is, see
http://facstaff.gallaudet.edu/marshall.wick/bus447/ 
promissory_estoppel.html

It's a bit more than that, but that's the general idea.

--Dan

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