OVPL and open ownership

[David Barrett]

Alex Bligh wrote:
 > David Barrett wrote:
 >> What I'm proposing is that the choice of which of these options to
 >> take is left to the developer (with the OVPL option being the
 >> default), and worded in such a way that does not introduce extra
 >> paperwork.
> 
> Isn't this achieved equivalently by leaving the OVPL as it is,
> and for the contributor to dual-license their modifications to
> the extent they own the IPR? [*]

(Thanks for the link to Lawrence Rosen's book.  Now that I understand 
your use of "dual-license", let me re-answer the previous question.)

Ahh, that's interesting.  Ok, are you suggesting that this whole 
discussion is moot, because the OVPL as written accomplishes all our 
goals?  To summarize the goals:

1) The open source community can use, modify, and redistribute the ID's 
code, but cannot create proprietary derivatives.

2) When the community contributes code, they implicity grant the ID the 
right to create proprietary derivatives.  Assuming they take no further 
action, this grows the body of code to which the ID has the exlusive 
right to create proprietary derivatives.

3) However, disgruntled community members can take explicit action to 
deny the ID exclusive proprietary derivative rights to their contributions.


Goals #1 and #2 are clearly satisfied by the current text of the OVPL. 
It's attempting to support goal #3 that has been the souce of all this 
discussion.

However, are you suggesting that disgruntled contributors *already* have 
the ability to satisfy goal #3 by merely exercising their copyright to 
grant the world an additional license to their contribution under the 
terms of BSD (and thus grant proprietary derivative rights to everyone, 
not just exclusively the ID)?

If so, that's fantastic, and I wish it hadn't taken me so much time 
coming to this understanding.  I started out believing OVPL was fine as 
written, and then came to agree that #3 was a necessary goal, and now I 
see that the OVPL already satisfies it.  Wonderful!

Unless I'm missing something?

-david