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):

> I'm not sure joint and collective are the only two relevant possibilities.

Indeed, I'm quite certain that you're entirely correct about the limits
on your present understanding:  So, you could try reading relevant
statutes and caselaw, to fix that.  Meanwhile, argumentum ad ignorantum
isn't isn't especially useful in public forums.

> This is my citation on Apache's /view/ of copyright law.

It is, actually, your citation of a contract between contributors and
Apache Foundation, which not only necessarily has no effect on copyright
law (except in contributor's grant of a copyright licence in clause 2),
but also is notably useless for learning about copyright law, and in
particular for learning about "who can relicense".