On Oct 17, 2005, at 12:26, Joshua Hoblitt wrote:
Does sticking "Copyright The Perl Foundation" at the top of a file
constitute a legal transfer of copyright?
No, there's no such thing as an implicit transfer of copyright rights.
Which is what I've been doing
but It's my understanding that copyright can only be transfered by a
written argument.
Yes, and in fact we won't be doing copyright *transfers* at all. When
you sign the contributor agreement, you'll be signing a copyright
*license*, which still leaves you with the right to use the code
elsewhere. TPF holds the "compilation copyright", that is the
copyright on the distributed collection of code. The individual files
say "Copyright The Perl Foundation" to reflect that fact. Individual
copyrights on included pieces of code are irrelevant from perspective
of the distribution (except that the contributors agree to give TPF
the license to distribute them).
This next statement isn't intending to stir up a
flame-war but does TPF holding the copyrights really matter? AFAIK -
The only value in having a single party holding _all_ the
copyrights is
to be able to change the licensing.
The advantage is down-stream, for the people and companies that use
Perl/Parrot. If there isn't a single source of ownership on the
distribution, then legally users need to negotiate with every single
individual contributor to Perl/Parrot to ensure that they have the
right to use it. No-one will do that.
So, with Perl 5, Larry is the compilation owner. The problem with
that is it makes Larry personally liable for any action brought
against Perl (not that that would ever happen, we hope), and a
successful suit could take his house, his car, his savings, etc. (not
that that would ever happen, we hope). With Perl 6/Parrot we decided
putting the burden of liability on the foundation is a better way to
do it. That way the worst that can happen in a legal action is that
someone can take the (limited) resources of TPF (not that that will
ever happen, we hope).
Allison
