[DotGNU]copyright assignment and liability

[Norbert Bollow]

David Sugar <address@hidden> wrote:

> 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.

In the context of the plan to create a company DotGNU Inc that
will generate revenue and pay developers, I think things could be
set up as following...

* "DotGNU Inc" offers contributing developers (who have been
  screened for dangerous levels of exposure to non-published
  information relating to competing proprietary software)
  protection from liabilities as follows:

  - The code is created as "work for hire" for DotGNU Inc, so
    that "DotGNU Inc" becomes initial copyright holder and also
    shoulders any and all risks which come from liabilities that
    legally cannot be disclaimed by the liabilities disclaimer
    in the GPL.

  - All this code is _immediately_ copyright-assigned by DotGNU
    Inc to the FSF, so that developers can be confident that the
    code will remain Free and GPL'd forever.

* When entire files (and not just patches) are contributed to
  the DotGNU project, the contributing developer will also have
  the option of writing the code as "work for hire" for another
  entity, such as for example a Limited Liability Company owned
  by the developer, a research institute, or a university.  Of
  course this copyright holder must be in agreement with
  licensing the code under GPL.

* DotGNU Inc will donate to the FSF an amount of 1% of sales
  revenue up to a limit of $20mln/year, for purpuses of funding
  the FSF's activities in the areas of litigating GPL violations
  and FS advocacy.

What do you all think?

Greetings, Norbert.

-- 
A member of FreeDevelopers and the DotGNU Steering Committee: dotgnu.org
Norbert Bollow, Weidlistr.18, CH-8624 Gruet   (near Zurich, Switzerland)
Tel +41 1 972 20 59       Fax +41 1 972 20 69      http://thinkcoach.com
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> 
> 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.
> >
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >Developers mailing list
> >address@hidden
> >http://subscribe.dotgnu.org/mailman/listinfo/developers
> >
> 
> 
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