Copyright and Contributions
Deryck Hodge
Do you guys have any guidelines with regard to copyright when
accepting contributions from others? Does copyright need to be
assigned to Lawrence Journal-World when submitting to Django? Or do
programmers retain copyright and assign the code to the project under
the BSD license? (I know the license is BSD, I'm just curious about
the project's handling of copyright).
Cheers,
deryck
--
Deryck Hodge http://www.devurandom.org/
Samba Team http://www.samba.org/
To begin... To begin... How to start? I'm hungry.
I should get coffee. Coffee would help me think. --Charlie Kaufman
Wilson Miner
with code that becomes part of Django, and so can anybody else. If you
copyright your code, that's independent from you submitting it as a
patch or committing it to the project. Committers must be able to
attest that the code they submit is original and not copyrighted
elsewhere, but that's about it.
Deryck Hodge
On 6/21/06, Wilson Miner <wmi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> AFAIK this is a non-issue with BSD. Under BSD, LJW can do anything
> with code that becomes part of Django, and so can anybody else. If you
> copyright your code, that's independent from you submitting it as a
> patch or committing it to the project. Committers must be able to
> attest that the code they submit is original and not copyrighted
> elsewhere, but that's about it.
>
This latter point is why I raised the question.
In my experience, copyright is used in projects to help committers
track who submitted what and who to ask/blame if questions of
ownership/origin come up. Some projects require copyright assignment,
others have informal rules. In Samba, we require personal copyright
not corporate, for the very reason you mention above, to help prove
original code. I just wondered if Django had any copyright
contingencies when submitting large chunks of code (obviously, small
patches aren't as much a concern.) No biggie, if not.
Thanks. Cheers,
Jacob Kaplan-Moss
> I just wondered if Django had any copyright
> contingencies when submitting large chunks of code (obviously, small
> patches aren't as much a concern.) No biggie, if not.
We don't; my conversations with the company lawyers seemed to
indicate that you're implicitly assigning copyright simply by
submitting code to an OSS project. Of course IANAL, but I'm going to
trust what the ones we talked to say because they, well, are.
[My impression from our lawyer, actually, was a bit more hopeless
than that; it seemed that if a company wants to sue you over
copyright they'll just do so and explicit copyright assignment won't
really make a better court case than the implicit one. Seems odd to
me, so perhaps I misunderstood what I was being told. Either way,
they're the ones who would actually be involved in any potential
lawsuit, so I'm just gonna do what they tell me :)]
Jacob
Deryck Hodge
> We don't; my conversations with the company lawyers seemed to
> indicate that you're implicitly assigning copyright simply by
> submitting code to an OSS project. Of course IANAL, but I'm going to
> trust what the ones we talked to say because they, well, are.
>
> [My impression from our lawyer, actually, was a bit more hopeless
> than that; it seemed that if a company wants to sue you over
> copyright they'll just do so and explicit copyright assignment won't
> really make a better court case than the implicit one. Seems odd to
> me, so perhaps I misunderstood what I was being told. Either way,
> they're the ones who would actually be involved in any potential
> lawsuit, so I'm just gonna do what they tell me :)]
>
Thanks for the info, Jacob. That makes sense. I seem to remember
hearing something similar from others (not sure if they were lawyers
or not) regarding explicit copyright.
Jan Claeys
> We don't; my conversations with the company lawyers seemed to
> indicate that you're implicitly assigning copyright simply by
> submitting code to an OSS project. Of course IANAL, but I'm going to
> trust what the ones we talked to say because they, well, are.
>From Wikipedia[1]:
Under the U.S. Copyright Act, a transfer of ownership in
copyright must be memorialized in a writing signed by the
transferor. For that purpose, ownership in copyright includes
exclusive licenses of rights. Thus exclusive licenses, to be
effective, must be granted in a written instrument signed by the
grantor. No special form of transfer or grant is required. A
simple document that identifies the work involved and the rights
being granted is sufficient.
That says something entirely different. ;-)
Also I think those company lawyers didn't really think about the
international aspect of "copyright law" (in many countries authors
retain their moral rights forever).
Of course, like you said, when people release their code under the BSD
license, there shouldn't be much of a problem when they keep the
copyright...
[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_copyright_law>
--
Jan Claeys
Jan Claeys
> indicate that you're implicitly assigning copyright simply by
> submitting code to an OSS project. Of course IANAL, but I'm going to
> trust what the ones we talked to say because they, well, are.
Ian Holsman
a CLA protects from people changing their minds as well, and in some
cases actually
assets that the person assigning the copyright over is the actual owner.
from my point of view it should be weighed up as follows:
cons of having people sign a CLA:
- about 20 minutes if they are an individual
- about 3 weeks if they work for a corporate (maybe shorter or
longer), depending on how anal your firm's lawyers are.
pros:
- possible extra protection
FWIW.. having a written agreement between you and your company saying
it is OK for you to do this stuff is also important for the developer.
Jacob Kaplan-Moss
>> From Wikipedia[1]:
>
> Under the U.S. Copyright Act, a transfer of ownership in
> copyright must be memorialized in a writing signed by the
> transferor. For that purpose, ownership in copyright includes
> exclusive licenses of rights. Thus exclusive licenses, to be
> effective, must be granted in a written instrument signed
> by the
> grantor. No special form of transfer or grant is required. A
> simple document that identifies the work involved and the
> rights
> being granted is sufficient.
>
> That says something entirely different. ;-)
Again, I'm not trying to interpret the law myself; I'm trying to
follow what my company's lawyers tell me too. They're the ones who
will be working with us if the worse happens -- everyone keep your
fingers crossed about that lame-assed ORM patent -- so I'll do what
they say.
Can we not talk about copyright anymore? It makes me nauseous.
Jacob
Jeremy Dunck
> fingers crossed about that lame-assed ORM patent -- so I'll do what
Patents don't have much to do with copyright. ;-)