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And it would have been such as easy problem to solve if someone had thought of it at the time. Plenty of open source projects have had to relearn this the hard

And it would have been such as easy problem to solve if someone had thought of it at the time. Plenty of open source projects have had to relearn this the hard way too. You need to insist on copyright assignment!

rwmj 11y ago
You need to insist that contributions are licensed under some open source license, which is different from copyright assignment. You may or may not do copyright assignment as well, but many projects do not since it gives the assignee powers to relicense the work including taking it proprietary. Then there are "moral rights" which complicate things in some countries.
- ascorbic 11y ago
  There aren't as far as I'm aware any open source licences that would allow the copyright holders to take existing work proprietary. Once it's released it can't be revoked. They'd only be able to do that to future work.
  - lordelph 11y ago
    A licence like a Creative Commons cc-by-sa is not exclusive, and allows the copyright holder to do what they like with their work. What they can't do is revoke the licence terms from anyone who chooses to exercise them. At best, the copyright holder can request removal of attribution. In another comment I mention the Geograph project which uses cc-by-sa. For some more background to that, I wrote about the reasons for selecting that licence to ensure long-term freedom of the archive here: http://www.geograph.org.uk/help/freedom http://www.geograph.org.uk/help/freedom
  - mintplant 11y ago
    If a project requires that contributors sign copyright over to a central party, that central party can later choose to release future versions under a proprietary license and profit off of others' past work. A project that does not require central copyright assignment and that receives sufficient outside contributions cannot have that happen, provided it's licensed under something like the (L)GPL. Copyright paralysis can be a feature rather than a bug.
  - vidarh 11y ago
    Yes and no. They can not take away rights granted to existing licensees. But the copyright holder can reissue the same work under whatever license they wish, without having to modify anything. What the comment you replied to point out is that if I release something under the GPL and then assign copyright to you, you can legally decide to relicense that code under a proprietary license so that the people buying it from me don't have to abide by the GPL. If I don't assign copyright, on the other hand, any such third parties would need my permission too.
    - defiblep 11y ago
      Act of Parliament might do it. They did it for Peter Pan, after all. I wonder if it would stand a chance as a private members bill....

rwmj 11y ago

You need to insist that contributions are licensed under some open source license, which is different from copyright assignment. You may or may not do copyright assignment as well, but many projects do not since it gives the assignee powers to relicense the work including taking it proprietary. Then there are "moral rights" which complicate things in some countries.

ascorbic 11y ago
There aren't as far as I'm aware any open source licences that would allow the copyright holders to take existing work proprietary. Once it's released it can't be revoked. They'd only be able to do that to future work.
- lordelph 11y ago
  A licence like a Creative Commons cc-by-sa is not exclusive, and allows the copyright holder to do what they like with their work. What they can't do is revoke the licence terms from anyone who chooses to exercise them. At best, the copyright holder can request removal of attribution. In another comment I mention the Geograph project which uses cc-by-sa. For some more background to that, I wrote about the reasons for selecting that licence to ensure long-term freedom of the archive here: http://www.geograph.org.uk/help/freedom http://www.geograph.org.uk/help/freedom
- mintplant 11y ago
  If a project requires that contributors sign copyright over to a central party, that central party can later choose to release future versions under a proprietary license and profit off of others' past work. A project that does not require central copyright assignment and that receives sufficient outside contributions cannot have that happen, provided it's licensed under something like the (L)GPL. Copyright paralysis can be a feature rather than a bug.
- vidarh 11y ago
  Yes and no. They can not take away rights granted to existing licensees. But the copyright holder can reissue the same work under whatever license they wish, without having to modify anything. What the comment you replied to point out is that if I release something under the GPL and then assign copyright to you, you can legally decide to relicense that code under a proprietary license so that the people buying it from me don't have to abide by the GPL. If I don't assign copyright, on the other hand, any such third parties would need my permission too.
  - defiblep 11y ago
    Act of Parliament might do it. They did it for Peter Pan, after all. I wonder if it would stand a chance as a private members bill....