Copyright

[Ian Lance Taylor]

"Ken Brown" <kenbrown at erols.com> writes:

> Lets deal with this one at a time.  My first question is this-who does the
> code belong to once it is GPL'ed?  What entity, person, group, troll,
> whoever owns the code?

It belongs to the copyright holder.

I've written free software myself.  I own the copyright on that
software, and the files are so labelled.  I've put the software under
the GPL.  That doesn't mean that I don't own it.  It just means that
other people are permitted to do certain things with it.

(This answer assumes the current intellectual property regime.  It's
possible to make a different answer philosophically, but practically
speaking today the copyright holder owns the code.)

Ian
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