how much right do I have on my project, if there are patches by others?

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Matthew Flaschen (matthew.flaschen at gatech.edu):

> Great.  I'm not impressed that ESR is correct, either, simply because he
> happened to publish an essay.

Is this some sort of wacky conversational gamesmanship?  The reason I
ask is that I hadn't made any sort of appeal to authority, so declining
one where none was offered seems, at best, an odd response.  

The closest I came to anything even resembling argumentum ad verecundiam
was pointing out that the subject happens to lie within Catherine's
(not, of course, Eric's) professional legal practice.  However, I was
actually perhaps naively hoping that people would _read_ the essay, and
ponder it on its objective merits.

Please do consider that approach, at your convenience. 

> I'm not citing it as proof of the state of copyright law.

Wait, were you the Matthew Flaschen <matthew.flaschen at gatech.edu> who
cited a contract's terms on a question of copyright law, or are you
perhaps some different Matthew Flaschen <matthew.flaschen at gatech.edu>?

> ...ESR's view...

As an occasional co-author myself, and on behalf of co-authors
everywhere, I'd ask that you please, next time you attempt to read
multi-author essays, not skip half the header data.