BSD-like licenses and the OSI approval process

[John Cowan]

dlw scripsit:

> Case(3)
> The original author A authorizes author B to create a derivative work 
> but there is no ownership agreement concerning the derivative work. 
> Author A owns the pre-existing work and author B owns the modifications 
> he contributes to the derivative work. Neither author may authorize 
> distribution of the complete derivative work absent the contractual 
> consent of the other author. 

That's far from clear, even where the process of making the derivative
actually consists of adds, changes, and deletes.  First of all, the adds,
changes, and deletes by themselves may be de minimis.  If the derivative
was made by transformation, such as translation (from French to English
or Cobol to Javascript, it matters not) the supposed modifications don't
even exist.

It is better to say that author B is the copyright owner of the derived
work, provided that he does not exercise his rights in a way that
infringes his agreement with A.  That includes being able to distribute
his work unless A's license forbids it.

-- 
Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.
        --Arthur C. Clarke, "The Nine Billion Names of God"
                John Cowan <cowan at ccil.org>