Posted by
David Garrett-2 on
Dec 11, 2005; 8:18am
URL: http://ofbiz.116.s1.nabble.com/Users-Apache-License-Copyright-Ownership-tp136703.html
David,
I would like to clarify an issue I have seen you refer to several times. Can
we get some assistance here from the ASF's V.P., Legal Affairs Cliff
Schmidt?
You wrote in a recent reply to Chris Howe :
===============David Jones wrote:
On the licensing issue... In general all artifacts in OFBiz _should_ have
one and only one copyright notice for "The Open For Business Project", and
to make it clear we put the URL in there too. The implication is that the
copyright is assigned to the project, however this has not been explicit in
the past. If/when we move to Apache the copyright will be owned by the ASF
and it will be explicit that all copyrights of contributions are assigned to
the ASF.
===
You seem to suggest that there is assignment of the ownership of the
copyright.
My understanding that in general(or at least in many cases) the copyright
remains with the initial contributor and what is granted (currently by
implication) is a *licence* to use the copyright. The key distinction being
licencing rights and assignment of copyright. Licencing rights according to
MIT or ASF transfers sufficiently flexible set of rights we all have been
happily enjoying for some time. At the same time I understand that the
original copyright creator retains that copyright and may even licence that
copyright under different terms eg GPL or restrictive commercial.
I have included below 2 significant clauses from the ASF Individual
Contributor's License:
This license is for your protection as a Contributor as well as the
protection of the Foundation and its users; it does not change your rights
to use your own Contributions for any other purpose.
2. Grant of Copyright License. Subject to the terms and conditions of
this Agreement, You hereby grant to the Foundation and to
recipients of software distributed by the Foundation a perpetual,
worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable
copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of,
publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute Your
Contributions and such derivative works.
...
In my legal juridiction copyright transfer (generally)needs to be by
specific assignment. These licence clauses from contributors are sufficient
to resolve the usage rights of ASF projects, even without assignment of
copyright ... At least for me :)
David G
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