Joint author doctrine

[W. Yip]

On Sun, 2 Apr 2000 13:47:02 -0400, Justin Wells <jread at semiotek.com> wrote:
>What does joint author doctrine mean for free software licenses? I 
>    The Copyright Act provides for joint authorship when a work is
>    prepared by more than one author "with the intention that their
>    contributions be merged into inseparable or interdependent
>    parts of a unitary whole".

The above quote is my answer to your question. It is this 'intention' that
is the test, and this applies for purposes of copyright *subsistence* that
is *before* the act of licensing. The result is that the subject that is
copyrighted will have a notice "Copyright A and B" where A and B are names
of co-owners, because they intented the merging of content for joint
authorship.

You may distinguish this from the case of a GPL where software is
"Copyright A" and A licenses it to B under the GPL. Subsequent copies all
contain "Copyright A", notwithstanding modifications may be 'inseparable or
interdependent' by B. A derivative work is already *after* the issue of
copyright subsistence.

IANAL (yet)