Proprietary software for Linux

[David Starner]

On Tue, Nov 30, 1999 at 06:19:09PM -0800, Mark Wells wrote:
> This gets more complicated when we consider that most open-source projects
> have contributors other than the copyright holder.
> 
> If I'm *not* assigning my rights to the copyright holder, then I'm
> licensing my own code under the GPL, and if I can show that any of it made
> it into the part of the project that's in dispute, I have standing as a
> copyright holder.

I don't believe you assign your rights to the copyright holder unless you have
a contract that says that. On one extreme a patch that fixes a simple
typo and is the only way to fix it, is not under copyright. OTOH, if you donate
an entire file or files and you put "Copyright (c) 1969 Mark Wells" on top,
then you definetly have copyright on part of it. It could be argued that a 
large patch would give you partial copyright interest over that part of the
code, but you could definetly be on the losing side in a court battle without
the copyright notice (even if it's not legally required, the notice makes your
interest uncontestable.)

So yes, but if you don't add a copyright notice, it might get ugly in court.

The FSF demands copyright transfers to solve part of this problem for their 
program. OTOH, they also give a contract that gives you the right to sue
them for taking a program proprietary, too.

IANAL, though.
-- 
David Starner - dstarner98 at aasaa.ofe.org
I see no trend at all, except toward women playing mean and ugly 
sociopaths who are good at killing and who enjoy dark powers. Maybe 
it's just my friends?
	-- Dr. Kromm, on who plays what type of character in RPGs