Re: [DotGNU]Ximian shows its stripes at last

[David Sugar]

Copyright assignment is somewhat nessisary in the GPL because it acts as 
a copyright license, whereby the recipient receives a license to use but 
no ownership is transferred.  Hence, there has to be clear and 
identifiable owner(s).  If ownership were transferred, as a conventional 
license does (although commercial licenses now explicitly claim to strip 
users of the basic right of second sale, but this is another issue), 
then the recipient could of course change the terms of the GPL and 
redistribute the given work under different ones to others, even taking 
away the freedoms the GPL protects.

This of course is one of the great dangers when asking people to assign 
copyright.  There has to be trust between the developers and whom 
copyright is being assigned to that the holder will continue to exercise 
the expressed and intended wishes of the developers.  The FSF certainly 
meets this goal, as one clearly understands what and how they will 
exercise the rights they aquire and expects them not to suddenly behave 
differently one day.  The FSF is perhaps the most ironic copyright 
holder of all, as it fully accepts the burdons of copyright ownership 
and yet exercises none of the so called privileges to it's own benefit.  
I would like for and do expect FD to achieve a similar level of 
confidence and trust in the community.

The GPL does work best when there is clear and reachable copyright 
holders who can defend the code should legal action be required to 
protect it.  However, any individual copyright holder may still have 
legal standing to do so.  Copyright assignment is also best should the 
need to change the license occur, such as say, some future court chooses 
to reject specific clauses and a new license need be drawn up.  Without 
clear consent of all copyright holders there are significent problems.

Copyright assignment is useful because people do occassionally 
dissapear.  I understand the Linux kernel has several thousand potential 
copyright owners involved.  Having some copyright owners unreachable is 
not in itself a disaster, but as noted above, makes certain things more 
difficult.

Another issue, which is less often seen, is liability.  Copyright 
assignment could be used as a means to lessen an individuals exposure to 
legal action, even of the groundless sort that sometimes is used simply 
to hurass or intimidate.  Producing a "work for hire" for others and/or 
using a corporate entity is an even more effective sheltering.

On the surface, having Ximian ask for copyright assignment is in itself 
a very legitimate request.  However, if the intent is to excersize 
copyright in a manner entirely different from the expressed intent of 
the developers at the time of assignment, that would be very deeply 
disturbing.  If true, I would probably use stronger words than that.  Of 
course, if the developers were made reasonably aware of how Ximian might 
or would actually exercise their assigned rights at the time they made 
their assignments and this is what they actually do, then I see no 
ethical problem with it from that perspective although I would not 
personally consider such a company producing products in that way to be 
acting as a free software company.

Rhys Weatherley wrote:

> Finally, confirmation from Miguel that Ximian is indeed
> looking to make proprietry versions of Mono sometime in
> the future:
>
> http://lists.ximian.com/archives/public/mono-list/2002-January/002510.html
>
> An excerpt:
>
> > Ximian owns the whole copyright to:
> >
> >       The Mono C# compiler.
> >       The runtime engine.
> >
> > We are copyright co-owners with many contributors on:
> >
> >       The class libraries.
> >
> > Ximian might relicense any of the code it owns under different
> licenses
>
> > (this for example enabled us to develop the Exchange plugin for
> > Evolution, which is a proprietary plugin).
> >
> > We also ask contributors to the Mono C# compiler and the runtime
> engine
>
> > to assign the copyright to Ximian (so far, we have got two copyright
> > assignments: one for the compiler, and one for the runtime engine).
>
> i.e. they own the entire source to the two most important
> components, and want all contributors to those components
> to assign their code to Ximian, so they can take those
> contributions private anytime they choose.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Rhys.
>
>
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