Pamela Chestek wrote: > To clarify, a joint owner could authorize use of the work under a license that is different from the original license, but that doesn't effect a change of the license altogether. The original license, from the other joint author(s), remains, so what you really would have is a dual-licensed work - admittedly still suboptimal, but the joint author couldn't remove the open source license altogether. And John points out in principle a patch could create a joint work, but I expect it would take a much more substantial contribution than that. I don't think someone can realistically come along and hijack a project by submitting a few minor changes.
Pam is right. Although, as a practical matter for commercial companies, this can become a nightmare scenario. For example, in the patent context, if there are multiple inventors then each of them can frustrate the attempts of the other inventors to commercialize the patent by offering the patent at a lower price. Why would someone license intellectual property if he believes he can get it for less while the joint inventors argue amongst themselves. :-) Whether or not this scenario is good for FOSS or for commercial sponsors of FOSS is, I presume, fact specific. But from my perspective, a joint creation scenario is very risky without a written contract to refer to. /Larry From: Chestek Pamela [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, July 20, 2013 12:28 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [License-discuss] Idea for time-dependent license, need comments On Jul 20, 2013, at 12:49 PM, John Cowan wrote: Mike Milinkovich scripsit: So you are asserting that by getting a single patch accepted into the Linux kernel that I can, under US copyright law, re-license the entire work? As long as I share any proceeds equally with all other copyright holders of course. In principle. However, a judge might well decide that that was not enough to make you a joint author. Judges aren't computers. To clarify, a joint owner could authorize use of the work under a license that is different from the original license, but that doesn't effect a change of the license altogether. The original license, from the other joint author(s), remains, so what you really would have is a dual-licensed work - admittedly still suboptimal, but the joint author couldn't remove the open source license altogether. And John points out in principle a patch could create a joint work, but I expect it would take a much more substantial contribution than that. I don't think someone can realistically come along and hijack a project by submitting a few minor changes. Pam Pamela S. Chestek, Esq. Chestek Legal PO Box 2492 Raleigh, NC 27602 919-800-8033 [email protected] www.chesteklegal.com
_______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
