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.