[License-discuss] Idea for time-dependent license, need comments

[Mike Milinkovich]

On 2013-07-19, at 11:31 PM, John Cowan <cowan at mercury.ccil.org> wrote:

> Ben Reser scripsit:
> 
>> This is an important point.  The only way the copyright owner isn't
>> special for an *overall* *work* (emphasis is important) is if there
>> are so many copyright holders that it becomes impossible to get them
>> all to agree to change the license (e.g. Linux Kernel).   Especially,
>> when the work is so intertwined the individual contributions are not
>> particular worthwhile independently (the copyright owner is obviously
>> always special for the work they did themselves).
> 
> In that case, the work is probably a joint work, defined by the
> U.S. copyright act as "a work prepared by two or more authors with
> the intention that their contributions be merged into inseparable or
> interdependent parts of a unitary whole."
> 
> In a joint work, *any* author can change the license under which the work
> may be exploited, contrary to the folk theory that says *all* authors
> must agree.  However, the proceeds, if any, must be divided equally
> among all the authors.  In this case, of course, there are no proceeds.

Well, I think that many would argue that such a work is a collective, rather than a joint work. In fact, it seems to me that most of the large collaborative communities are running under that assumption.