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One other concern that is important here is that if the need or desire to litigate the license ever occurs, inability to clearly show ownership hampers an effec
by ajarmst 6y ago
One other concern that is important here is that if the need or desire to litigate the license ever occurs, inability to clearly show ownership hampers an effective argument (or at least makes it less clear) and might make the license terms expensive or impossible to enforce. As copyright owner, it's your decision about whether and on what terms you want to participate in a project, but the project does get to decide on what terms it requires of contributors. I'd argue that a strong reluctance to share one's work under fairly common terms in the Open Source community only means that you're not a good candidate for working on such projects. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
- garmaine 6y agoCorrect me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe you need full ownership to show standing. It would be sufficient to show partial ownership from some of the copyright holders just to establish standing.
- ajarmst 6y agoi'm not competent to explain standing requirements, but I did say that it would be more difficult, not impossible. While I certainly agree that license issuer probably has standing to sue or defend, I also think that any complexity around who owns what would necessarily complicate discovery, potentially add other litigants to the case, and provide an opponent with more colourable arguments that they don't have standing. The goal of litigation is frequently just to make even a doomed case too expensive to continue (far too often! lobby for Anti-SLAPP in your jurisdiction). I'd think complex ownership questions would be a boon for that sort of cynicism.