Licensing Model: Joint Copyright Assignments

Mitchell Baker Mitchell at osafoundation.org
Tue Apr 15 20:31:42 UTC 2003


Larry raises an additional risk of OSAF's proposed licensing model:  
that some set of potential contributors will not participant because of 
the copyright assignment policy.  We will certainly include this in our 
considerations.

There are a number of factors that might lead to a (joint) copyright 
assignment might be seen as desirable.  

First, the definition of "derivative work" "collected work and 
"compilation" are complex, as shown by the recent extended  discussion 
on this list regarding the definition of derivative work.  Also, I 
suspect a software release contains some elements  that are  "separate 
and independent works in themselves" required for a  collective work and 
some elements that are not separate and independent works and would 
therefore lead to a "compilation."  And in addition, these complex terms 
are applicable in the U.S., but grow ever more complex in an 
international setting.  So an absolute reliance on a precise 
characterization under U.S. law has some drawbacks.

Second, the ability to change the open-source terms under which the code 
is licensed is quite important.  Over time, new needs will arise, 
whether it's dealing with patent issues, DCMA issues or other as yet 
unanticipated new developments.  It is possible to maintain a source 
tree with many different licensors and then seek their approval for each 
such change.  But this is extraordinarily difficult with a large number 
of contributors and risky to count on.

Also, OSAF hopes to generate revenue from commercial entities that use 
Chandler code in apps which are not completely open source.    Now, this 
is clearly a possible source of controversy.   Its feasibility depends 
on the size of the community that is willing to allow their efforts to 
play a role in funding a non-profit, core development team.  We hope 
that the contributions provided by OSAF, the quality of the OSAF 
releases, the usefulness of the product and the community that develops 
around Chandler will generate enough value and good will that commercial 
licenses to sustain OSAF as a non-profit, open source development 
organization will be acceptable. 


Mitchell

Lawrence E. Rosen wrote:

>Hi Mitchell,
>
>Why do you need a copyright assignment at all?  The OSAF's code tree is
>a collective work.  The OSAF will own the copyright in that collective
>work, which you can protect in a copyright infringement lawsuit.  Why
>does OSAF care about the copyrights for the components in the tree as
>long as you have a worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free license to use
>those components, copy them, modify them and distribute them as part of
>the OSAF tree or anything else?  
>
>The license-back in the Sun copyright assignment is helpful so that the
>author can continue to use his own work, but it would prevent the
>original author from defending his copyright if the assignee did
>something untoward (like bankruptcy, change of mission from open source
>to proprietary, etc.).  Why should anyone trust Sun (or OSAF, or anyone
>else) with ownership of, and right to defend, their intellectual
>property?
>
>Potential contributors ought to consider carefully before assigning
>copyright to anyone whose interests in protecting the copyright are
>potentially different from their own.  I would advise any clients of
>mine to avoid assigning their copyrights to anyone unless they intend to
>relinquish all authority over their own work in perpetuity.  
>
>As copyright assignments go, however, the Sun one is pretty clean.
>
>/Larry Rosen
>
>  
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Mitchell Baker [mailto:Mitchell at osafoundation.org] 
>>Sent: Monday, April 14, 2003 5:29 PM
>>To: Mitchell Baker
>>Cc: license-discuss at opensource.org
>>Subject: Re: Licensing Model: Joint Copyright Assignments
>>
>>
>>As described in a previous message, the Open Source Applicaitons 
>>Foundation is planning to use a licensing model similar to that of  
>>MySQL.  We also plan to require copyright assignments for 
>>code accepted 
>>back into OSAF's tree.  I'm very interested in the Joint Copyright 
>>Assignment that is used with the OpenOffice project.  (See 
>>http://www.openoffice.org/FAQs/faq-licensing.html#usinglicenses and 
>>http://www.openoffice.org/contributing.html.)
>>
>>Does anyone hae experience with this model?  Or know of 
>>reasons why this 
>>Joint Copyright ownership would be a problem?  I like it because the 
>>original creator of submissions maintains the ability to use 
>>it as he or 
>>she wishes, which seems a good thing.  But I have little direct 
>>experience, so don't know if I am missing difficulties with this plan.
>>
>>Thanks for your time,
>>
>>Mitchell
>>
>>
>>
>>Mitchell Baker wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>The Open Source Applications Foundation 
>>>      
>>>
>>(http://www.osafoundation.org)
>>    
>>
>>>is planning the 0.1 release 
>>>      
>>>
>>of Chandler (a personal information 
>>    
>>
>>>manager) shortly, hopefully by the end of April.  OSAF's plan of 
>>>record for licensing is to follow the model used by MySQL:  
>>>      
>>>
>>recipients 
>>    
>>
>>>must either (a) make their entire application available 
>>>      
>>>
>>under the GPL 
>>    
>>
>>>or other approved open source license, or (b) get a 
>>>      
>>>
>>commercial license 
>>    
>>
>>>from OSAF.  I'm very interested in the thinking of this group about 
>>>this model.  The plan is reasonably firm but not set in 
>>>      
>>>
>>stone, so I'd 
>>    
>>
>>>appreciate hearing about potential pitfalls as well as benefits.
>>>
>>>Mitchell
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>--
>>license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
>>
>>    
>>
>
>
>  
>


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