Re: Bye - Bye , open source derivative works litigation

[Hyman Rosen]

On 2/11/2010 8:25 PM, amicus_curious wrote:
> So taking someone else's work and republishing it as a whole is not
> joint authorship? You are in an untenable position to be sure!

A joint work is created through the intention of all
authors to form it. Without such intention, the work
is not joint, it is collective, with copyright on
each component owned by the author of the component,
and copyright on the arrangement owned by the arrangers.
For modifications made to existing components or their
arrangement, copyright is owned by the original author
and as well by the author making the change, as a
derivative work.

In fact, the concepts of derivative work and joint work
are in certain ways opposite. A joint work is created
through intention of co-authors, and each author has full
rights to the work, while a derivative work is created with
permission from the original author and then copyright in
the result is held by both authors, and that work can be
copied and distributed only with permission of both authors.

The GPL speaks of modifications as derivative works. In no
way does it speak of joint works, and therefore authors who
use it as the license for code they produce have indicated
that they are not creating a joint work.