Re: Bye - Bye , open source derivative works litigation

[Hyman Rosen]

On 2/11/2010 4:37 PM, RJack wrote:
> We are not speaking about the intent of the developers concerning the
> GPL and "all third parties" (meaning the general public -- remember
> "General Public License"?) but the relationship among the *developers*
> themselves. The GPL is irrelevant to the intent among the contributing
> developers. The developers *actions* carry far for weight than any
> *language* about intent.

The GPL is entirely relevant - intent can be imputed when there
is no document describing the relationship among several authors,
but when there is such documentation, there is no need to search
for intent. The authors have all stated exactly what the copyright
relationship among them is, by using the GPL as their license. Had
they wished to create a joint work, they would have said so in the
license. But they did not.

The notion that a joint work happens by accident is laughable.
This is what a document creating a joint work looks like:
<http://www.openoffice.org/licenses/jca.pdf>
    1. Contributor owns, and has sufficient rights to contribute,
    all source code and related material intended to be compiled
    or integrated with the source code for the OpenOffice.org open
    source product (the "Contribution") which Contributor has ever
    delivered, and Sun has accepted, for incorporation into the
    technology made available under the OpenOffice.org open source
    project.
    2. Contributor hereby assigns to Sun joint ownership in all
    worldwide common law and statutory rights associated with the
    copyrights, copyright application, copyright registration and
    moral rights in the Contribution to the extent allowable under
    applicable local laws and copyright conventions. Contributor
    agrees that this assignment may be submitted by Sun to register
    a copyright in the Contribution. Contributor retains the right
    to use the Contribution for Contributor's own purposes. This
    Joint Copyright Assignment supersedes and replaces all prior
    copyright assignments made by Contributor to Sun under the
    OpenOffice.org project.
    3. Contributor is legally entitled to grant the above assignment
    and agrees not to provide any Contribution that violates any law
    or breaches any contract.