Re: Bye - Bye , open source derivative works litigation

[Hyman Rosen]

On 2/10/2010 3:50 PM, Alexander Terekhov wrote:
> You don't understand, Hyman.

No, you don't understand.

> The idea is that by doing a few modifying and copyrightable changes into
> a "single program" in response to the GPL offer one becomes a joint
> copyright owner of the entire work "as a whole" and can rightfully
> license that entire work (with 'as a whole' as 'defined' and intended by
> the GPL) in disrespect of the GPL.

No, that's completely wrong: <http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/ownership.html>
    A joint work is defined by the 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.

A second author cannot hijack someone else's work to become a
joint author - joint authorship has to be consented to by every
author of the work, including the first. Rather, the first
author has authorized the preparation of derivative works only
under the GPL, and any secondary author who makes changes and
copies and distributes the resulting work other than under the
GPL is simply infringing copyright.