Joint author doctrine

[David Johnson]

On Sun, 02 Apr 2000, Justin Wells wrote:

> So it sounds to me like if you allow someone to collaborate with you to 
> write some software they become a joint author of the resulting work. Does
> this apply to all people who release derivative works with your permission?
> Are thay all automatically joint authors with you over the result?

A very good reason to have all contributions give you their copyrights.
If I remember correctly, any patch over ten lines gets problematic.

But you mistake "derivitive" from what the copyright clause you quoted
called "inseparable or interdependent parts of a unitary whole". A
derivative work is not a "unitary whole" with the original. So to
answer you question, Lucid never had rights to close up their emacs
derivative.

> What's worse is that if this is true anyone who contributes to your project
> can get around the GPL and grant non-exclusive rights to the whole work to 
> anyone they like. 

Only if they are a joint author. The FSF requires all submissions to
assign copyright to the FSF. The KDE project has copyrights assigned to
"The KDE Team". Etc.

-- 
David Johnson...
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