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Re: Bye - Bye , open source derivative works litigation


From: Hyman Rosen
Subject: Re: Bye - Bye , open source derivative works litigation
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:04:58 -0500
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091204 Thunderbird/3.0

On 2/11/2010 2:56 PM, Alexander Terekhov wrote:
The GPL is irrelevant to co-authors because they have exclusive
ownership.

No one can become a joint author on GPLed code because
they have no permission to create a derivative work
except under the GPL. The original author, having
released the work under the GPL, has clearly indicated
his intention not to form a joint work.

Tou ease your mind a bit, think of a case when a contribution to the
joint work isn't a derivative work of pre-existing contributions to that
joint work.
> Next think about the fact that there is nothing in the GPL saying that
> derivative works can't be joined into joint works (and that would be
> unenforceable anyway).

It is not a joint work to begin with. There is no such
thing as a contribution to the work that is not a
derivative work. Someone may prepare a new collective
work using a GPLed component, but that work must be
licensed as a whole under the GPL in order to copy and
distribute it. That author may announce his intention
to create a joint work, but that cannot affect the
status of the component; no one may help themselves to
the work of another and become its co-author, and that
component may only be distributed as part of a collective
work under the terms of the GPL.


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