8 ms·

Nobody is discussing the reason for the copyright-assignment requirement. I only know about it because I was caught in the issue that it means to prevent nearl

by btilly 5y ago

Nobody is discussing the reason for the copyright-assignment requirement. I only know about it because I was caught in the issue that it means to prevent nearly 20 years ago. The issue is that in many places (for example New York State), work done by a professional employee actually belongs to your employer. A developer can write code, contribute it where they want, and license it as they wish. But the code is actually owned by their employer. Which means that if there is a future problem, the employer can assert their copyright interest and people who thought that they had the right to use that code, suddenly don't. Because developers themselves are seldom aware of such rules, the FSF took the ultra-safe approach of requiring employers to sign off. That way they are absolutely sure that there will never be a problem. However other open source projects have found that, in practice, problems are rare. And when there is a problem, the employers usually will agree to the license.

kencausey 5y ago
If you can go into it, what was the resolution of the issue in which you were caught?
daptaq 5y ago
AFAIK (one of the) the main reason for the copyright requirements is so that the GNU project can update the license, when a new version of the GPL is released, fixing loopholes or other issues in older versions. I am weary of dropping the copyright assignment, because issues like Tivoization could always pop up without anyone anticipating it, and even have contributors actively resisting the updates to fix these issues. (Edit: What I also came to think of is that GCC recently positioned itself in opposition to the FSF because of the "Stallman-Controversy". Is this a kind of retaliation on their part?)
- wahern 5y ago
  Copyright assignment is about enforceability, not updating the license. It's much easier to maintain copyright registrations, and to prosecute an infringement case, when you control all the copyrights. Anyhow, we don't have to guess why they want it: > Under US copyright law, which is the law under which most free software programs have historically been first published, there are very substantial procedural advantages to registration of copyright. And despite the broad right of distribution conveyed by the GPL, enforcement of copyright is generally not possible for distributors: only the copyright holder or someone having assignment of the copyright can enforce the license. If there are multiple authors of a copyrighted work, successful enforcement depends on having the cooperation of all authors. > In order to make sure that all of our copyrights can meet the recordkeeping and other requirements of registration, and in order to be able to enforce the GPL most effectively, FSF requires that each author of code incorporated in FSF projects provide a copyright assignment, and, where appropriate, a disclaimer of any work-for-hire ownership claims by the programmer's employer. That way we can be sure that all the code in FSF projects is free code, whose freedom we can most effectively protect, and therefore on which other developers can completely rely. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html
  - daptaq 5y ago
    Yes, it is probably primarily about enforceability, but why should that mean that updating the license is also part of the consideration?
    - wahern 5y ago
      There could be all kinds of secondary motivations, including that ability. But most GPL'd software includes the "or later" provision, which means it's relatively easy for the FSF to update the license of projects, especially if they stipulate that contributions must be licensed thusly. Note that with or without assignment, the FSF could never rescind the license on previously released software, except perhaps for infringers (because of the termination clause). So assignment doesn't actually provide much value on that score except as it relates to enforcement.
  - linuxhansl 5y ago
    Can't you enforce a license too? A license is a contract and if code is released in breach of that license than should be enforceable as well. Is the issue that a license breach is a legally weaker case than copyright infringement?
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      A license is not (necessarily) a contract, so a license breach is (mainly) enforceable precisely because it _is_ a copyright violation.
  - Blikkentrekker 5y ago
    > Under US copyright law, which is the law under which most free software programs have historically been first published, They are published with a worldwide public licence; I'm not even sure how one can publish something such as that under any specific law. One drafts a public licence, and different parts of it are enforceable to different degrees in different jurisdictions. It is of course quite possible for the licence to be gnostic of the country of the acceptee, and apply differing provisions in different cases, but I would feel such would strongly go against F.S.F. philosophies.
- kop316 5y ago
  I figured that's why the GPL includes the language that says "GPL {x} or at your option a later version". That way, if you want to go to GPL {x+1}, the license already allows it.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    Yup. But, remember, that's only if the original licensor actually executes that option, by explicitly stating so. If they says[1] "...under GPL version X", period, then that's it. ___ [1]: Hey, it's "the _singular_ 'they'", innit?
- opk 5y ago
  The GPL already includes a clause stating "or any later version" so GNU software can happily update the GPL version. Linux specifically has an exception to this. It is the dodgiest part of the whole GPL in my opinion and gives the Free Software Foundation a lot of power and makes it impossible to fork or replace the established organisation if it goes awry.
  - carlhjerpe 5y ago
    Doesn't this work out a bit like MongoDB, where Amazon forked a version released before they replaced the GPL with their own license? Meaning the freedoms of the GPL will be withheld, no?
    - DSMan195276 5y ago
      Yes it's very similar, the scope is just vastly different. If you have the "or later" GPL clause in your license then any new version of the GPL is retroactively a valid licensing option for your code, even if it's vastly different or actually removes freedoms. If they wanted the FSF could release GPLv4 tomorrow that just says all code licensed under it is public domain, and instantly all code with the "or later" clause could be treated as public domain.
      - carlhjerpe 5y ago
        Thanks for the clarification.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    But if you don’t own the copyright to a particular piece of the code, doesn’t that also mean you don’t have the authority to assign a license to it?
    - dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
      The GPL gives you a licence to the code, you don't need to own the copyright.
- rodgerd 5y ago
  > What I also came to think of is that GCC recently positioned itself in opposition to the FSF because of the "Stallman-Controversy". Is this a kind of retaliation on their part? "Random acts of rms" aren't a new problem for the GCC developers, and resulted in the egcs split, have caused ongoing pain with people trying to improve the ability of GCC to integrate with IDEs, and of course there's the whole debacle where the Clang developers offered their work to the FSF but Stallman missed the email and found it a decade later... However, several of the lead developers for C++ (at least) announced they were no longer going to be assigning their code ownership to the FSF in the wake of the recent FSF calls around rms, which has put the GCC project in the position where the have the choices to: 1. Hope the FSF change their mind and prioritise free software ahead of the Cult of Richard. 2. Commit to shipping a sub-par and increasingly irrelevant free software compiler. 3. Drop the CLA requirement. In the absence of any change on the first point, the third option looks like the best way to ensure that there is still a high-quality, GPL complier available.
  - edelsohn 5y ago
    Apple and the LLVM developers were contributing to GCC, interacting with the GCC Community and in contact with the GCC Steering Committee. They knew that GCC was lead by the GCC Steering Committee, not RMS. The fact that they supposedly sent one email to RMS, did not follow up with RMS, and did not try to contact any other leadership in the GCC Project is convenient.
    - rodgerd 5y ago
      > The fact that they supposedly sent one email to RMS Stallman himself has confirmed that they did. Where does this "supposedly" come from?
      - edelsohn 5y ago
        Chris sent a message to RMS and RMS dropped the ball. There were other conversations with Chris and Chris dropped the ball as well.
    - 5y ago
- geenew 5y ago
  s/weary/wary
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- knz_ 5y ago
  > (Edit: What I also came to think of is that GCC recently positioned itself in opposition to the FSF because of the "Stallman-Controversy". Is this a kind of retaliation on their part?) More like a necessity to keep the project alive. Half of the top contributors threatened to leave when FSF tried to coup the steering committee.
  - javagram 5y ago
    > More like a necessity to keep the project alive. Half of the top contributors threatened to leave when FSF tried to coup the steering committee. (Replied to you in another place as well) what is the source for “coup the steering committee”?
- Blikkentrekker 5y ago
  Many that contribute due not want such an update to the work they own without reviewing the new licence to see if they agree. Another solution which other projects use is a requirement that it be licensed to that project, and that project alone as permissive, which has no greater risk than assigning copyright to that project, the project can now relicense the code as it sees fit, but one continue to owns once work and one is free to license it to others how one sees fit, including not at all.
- nine_k 5y ago
  GCC has been split once (remember EGCS?), then merged back. It did not really hurt the project much, AFAICT. There can be another split.
  - pwdisswordfish8 5y ago
    People might argue that it's a stretch (and there'd be some rationale to the argument, although it's ultimately wrong), but LLVM would be aptly considered a split, and it's a split that has had a huge impact. Lattner begins working on LLVM, a code generator. He and his advisor publish a paper "Architecture for a Next-Generation GCC" <https://llvm.org/pubs/2003-05-01-GCCSummit2003.html https://llvm.org/pubs/2003-05-01-GCCSummit2003.html>. When he considers this work sufficiently mature, Lattner attempts to donate it to the FSF and get it into mainline GCC, but he gets rebuffed. Apple, who has taken an interest and is his employer by that point, really wants LLVM to be a thing, though, so two years later, they announce Clang and eventually turn out an entire compiler toolchain. It transforms from the original LLVM per se into what people mean when they say "LLVM" today: the work at llvm.org—which, again, all started from what was expected to be a replacement for GCC's code generator.
beervirus 5y ago
This seems to be about assignments from the individuals though, not their employers.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  The question is whether the stuff to be assigned (or not) belongs to the individuals or their employers. An assignment from someone who isn't actually entitled to assign away something (because they don't own it in the first place) is useless.
viraptor 5y ago
I'm not sure I understand this idea. Whether you assign the rights to FSF or not, the situation is not different. (For the project) If the employer owns the rights, the copyright assignment is illegal and void - the employee never had the right to do it. It's a bigger hassle for the employee who lied, but gcc would be in the same situation. "That way they are absolutely sure that there will never be a problem." just doesn't seem correct in that case.
- skissane 5y ago
  > If the employer owns the rights, the copyright assignment is illegal and void - the employee never had the right to do it Is that actually true though? Suppose Alice has a full-time job with HyperSuperMegaSoft. Alice writes a patch to IndependentSoftwareFoundation's FooBolCompiler. When Alice submits the patch to IndependentSoftwareFoundation, she warrants to IndependentSoftwareFoundation that she has the right to do so. Years later, HyperSuperMegaSoft decides to sue IndependentSoftwareFoundation for including Alice's patch in their FooBolCompiler, because they claim Alice never got proper internal approval (under HyperSuperMegaSoft's internal policies and procedures) to submit the patch. Is a court going to invalidate Alice's agreement with IndependentSoftwareFoundation because Alice didn't follow the right internal procedures with her employer? Or will the court decide that IndependentSoftwareFoundation shouldn't be punished for Alice's mistake, that HyperSuperMegaSoft is bound by Alice's actions as their employee even if they didn't approve of them, that IndependentSoftwareFoundation has the right to use the software under the agreement, and that HyperSuperMegaSoft can't successfully sue IndependentSoftwareFoundation (or FooBolCompiler's end-users)–they may still be able to successfully sue Alice for violating her employment contract (although that probably is far less an attractive proposition to HyperSuperMegaSoft than suing IndependentSoftwareFoundation is.) IANAL so I don't know what the right answer is. (The right answer probably depends on the jurisdiction.) But I get the impression some people assume that HyperSuperMegaSoft would automatically win against IndependentSoftwareFoundation, possibly without having good justification for that assumption.
  - viraptor 5y ago
    > invalidate Alice's agreement with IndependentSoftwareFoundation because Alice didn't follow the right internal procedures with her employer? Internal procedures are not the law. The contacts are. If the contract says her software belongs to the company, then it does. (Unless the country law says otherwise of course) In the same way I can't legally sell you a copy of Windows license that I totally promise I've got an agreement with MS about. It's not a license I have rights to.
dheera 5y ago
On a radiant note, I wonder what would happen if one used the Free Art License or Creative Commons ShareAlike for code? They're nice and simple licenses, and programming is an art.
- Macha 5y ago
  Creative Commons explicitly warn against using Creative Commons licenses for software: > We recommend against using Creative Commons licenses for software. Instead, we strongly encourage you to use one of the very good software licenses which are already available > Unlike software-specific licenses, CC licenses do not contain specific terms about the distribution of source code, which is often important to ensuring the free reuse and modifiability of software. Many software licenses also address patent rights, which are important to software but may not be applicable to other copyrightable works. Additionally, our licenses are currently not compatible with the major software licenses, so it would be difficult to integrate CC-licensed work with other free software. Existing software licenses were designed specifically for use with software and offer a similar set of rights to the Creative Commons licenses. https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-commons-license-to-software https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-comm...
linuxhansl 5y ago
IANAL but an employee generally does not have to just contribute work related code. The company has to OK it either for specific contributions or as a blanket policy, but it's opt in. Then there is a secondary question on whether you contribute the code under a specific license (say Apache 2.0 GPL, etc.) or whether you assign the copyright. In the former case the code can only be used in accordance with that specific license, in the latter case the code can be re-licensed by the copyright holder. In either case the company could claim that the employee did not have the right to contribute the code, but (AFAIK) that is independent of a copyright grant vs license grant.
cryptonector 5y ago
By far the most important reason to require copyright assignment is to retain the ability to change the license at will. You don't need copyright assignment for the case you mention: you can require that an officer of the employer make the contribution, or that the contribution be in the name of the employer.
varispeed 5y ago
It is worth mentioning, that people are unaware that often the code they create after work, in their own spare time is actually owned by their employer. I think this should be illegal and if employer claims ownership of your time outside of working hours, they should be required to pay accordingly, perhaps with out of office extra rates. Unfortunately there is not much a poor employee can do against a multi billion company that avoids tax and has more money to spend on lawyers than some smaller countries could...
- CRConrad 5y ago
  A) Only (or at least, almost only) in America. B) Not even everywhere in America, I think -- ISTR reading about how employment terms like that are illegal in some state(s?).

by btilly 5y ago

kencausey 5y ago

If you can go into it, what was the resolution of the issue in which you were caught?

daptaq 5y ago

AFAIK (one of the) the main reason for the copyright requirements is so that the GNU project can update the license, when a new version of the GPL is released, fixing loopholes or other issues in older versions. I am weary of dropping the copyright assignment, because issues like Tivoization could always pop up without anyone anticipating it, and even have contributors actively resisting the updates to fix these issues. (Edit: What I also came to think of is that GCC recently positioned itself in opposition to the FSF because of the "Stallman-Controversy". Is this a kind of retaliation on their part?)

wahern 5y ago
Copyright assignment is about enforceability, not updating the license. It's much easier to maintain copyright registrations, and to prosecute an infringement case, when you control all the copyrights. Anyhow, we don't have to guess why they want it: > Under US copyright law, which is the law under which most free software programs have historically been first published, there are very substantial procedural advantages to registration of copyright. And despite the broad right of distribution conveyed by the GPL, enforcement of copyright is generally not possible for distributors: only the copyright holder or someone having assignment of the copyright can enforce the license. If there are multiple authors of a copyrighted work, successful enforcement depends on having the cooperation of all authors. > In order to make sure that all of our copyrights can meet the recordkeeping and other requirements of registration, and in order to be able to enforce the GPL most effectively, FSF requires that each author of code incorporated in FSF projects provide a copyright assignment, and, where appropriate, a disclaimer of any work-for-hire ownership claims by the programmer's employer. That way we can be sure that all the code in FSF projects is free code, whose freedom we can most effectively protect, and therefore on which other developers can completely rely. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html
- daptaq 5y ago
  Yes, it is probably primarily about enforceability, but why should that mean that updating the license is also part of the consideration?
  - wahern 5y ago
    There could be all kinds of secondary motivations, including that ability. But most GPL'd software includes the "or later" provision, which means it's relatively easy for the FSF to update the license of projects, especially if they stipulate that contributions must be licensed thusly. Note that with or without assignment, the FSF could never rescind the license on previously released software, except perhaps for infringers (because of the termination clause). So assignment doesn't actually provide much value on that score except as it relates to enforcement.
- linuxhansl 5y ago
  Can't you enforce a license too? A license is a contract and if code is released in breach of that license than should be enforceable as well. Is the issue that a license breach is a legally weaker case than copyright infringement?
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    A license is not (necessarily) a contract, so a license breach is (mainly) enforceable precisely because it _is_ a copyright violation.
- Blikkentrekker 5y ago
  > Under US copyright law, which is the law under which most free software programs have historically been first published, They are published with a worldwide public licence; I'm not even sure how one can publish something such as that under any specific law. One drafts a public licence, and different parts of it are enforceable to different degrees in different jurisdictions. It is of course quite possible for the licence to be gnostic of the country of the acceptee, and apply differing provisions in different cases, but I would feel such would strongly go against F.S.F. philosophies.
kop316 5y ago
I figured that's why the GPL includes the language that says "GPL {x} or at your option a later version". That way, if you want to go to GPL {x+1}, the license already allows it.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  Yup. But, remember, that's only if the original licensor actually executes that option, by explicitly stating so. If they says[1] "...under GPL version X", period, then that's it. ___ [1]: Hey, it's "the _singular_ 'they'", innit?
opk 5y ago
The GPL already includes a clause stating "or any later version" so GNU software can happily update the GPL version. Linux specifically has an exception to this. It is the dodgiest part of the whole GPL in my opinion and gives the Free Software Foundation a lot of power and makes it impossible to fork or replace the established organisation if it goes awry.
- carlhjerpe 5y ago
  Doesn't this work out a bit like MongoDB, where Amazon forked a version released before they replaced the GPL with their own license? Meaning the freedoms of the GPL will be withheld, no?
  - DSMan195276 5y ago
    Yes it's very similar, the scope is just vastly different. If you have the "or later" GPL clause in your license then any new version of the GPL is retroactively a valid licensing option for your code, even if it's vastly different or actually removes freedoms. If they wanted the FSF could release GPLv4 tomorrow that just says all code licensed under it is public domain, and instantly all code with the "or later" clause could be treated as public domain.
    - carlhjerpe 5y ago
      Thanks for the clarification.
- kube-system 5y ago
  But if you don’t own the copyright to a particular piece of the code, doesn’t that also mean you don’t have the authority to assign a license to it?
  - dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
    The GPL gives you a licence to the code, you don't need to own the copyright.
rodgerd 5y ago
> What I also came to think of is that GCC recently positioned itself in opposition to the FSF because of the "Stallman-Controversy". Is this a kind of retaliation on their part? "Random acts of rms" aren't a new problem for the GCC developers, and resulted in the egcs split, have caused ongoing pain with people trying to improve the ability of GCC to integrate with IDEs, and of course there's the whole debacle where the Clang developers offered their work to the FSF but Stallman missed the email and found it a decade later... However, several of the lead developers for C++ (at least) announced they were no longer going to be assigning their code ownership to the FSF in the wake of the recent FSF calls around rms, which has put the GCC project in the position where the have the choices to: 1. Hope the FSF change their mind and prioritise free software ahead of the Cult of Richard. 2. Commit to shipping a sub-par and increasingly irrelevant free software compiler. 3. Drop the CLA requirement. In the absence of any change on the first point, the third option looks like the best way to ensure that there is still a high-quality, GPL complier available.
- edelsohn 5y ago
  Apple and the LLVM developers were contributing to GCC, interacting with the GCC Community and in contact with the GCC Steering Committee. They knew that GCC was lead by the GCC Steering Committee, not RMS. The fact that they supposedly sent one email to RMS, did not follow up with RMS, and did not try to contact any other leadership in the GCC Project is convenient.
  - rodgerd 5y ago
    > The fact that they supposedly sent one email to RMS Stallman himself has confirmed that they did. Where does this "supposedly" come from?
    - edelsohn 5y ago
      Chris sent a message to RMS and RMS dropped the ball. There were other conversations with Chris and Chris dropped the ball as well.
  - 5y ago
geenew 5y ago
s/weary/wary
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
knz_ 5y ago
> (Edit: What I also came to think of is that GCC recently positioned itself in opposition to the FSF because of the "Stallman-Controversy". Is this a kind of retaliation on their part?) More like a necessity to keep the project alive. Half of the top contributors threatened to leave when FSF tried to coup the steering committee.
- javagram 5y ago
  > More like a necessity to keep the project alive. Half of the top contributors threatened to leave when FSF tried to coup the steering committee. (Replied to you in another place as well) what is the source for “coup the steering committee”?
Blikkentrekker 5y ago
Many that contribute due not want such an update to the work they own without reviewing the new licence to see if they agree. Another solution which other projects use is a requirement that it be licensed to that project, and that project alone as permissive, which has no greater risk than assigning copyright to that project, the project can now relicense the code as it sees fit, but one continue to owns once work and one is free to license it to others how one sees fit, including not at all.
nine_k 5y ago
GCC has been split once (remember EGCS?), then merged back. It did not really hurt the project much, AFAICT. There can be another split.
- pwdisswordfish8 5y ago
  People might argue that it's a stretch (and there'd be some rationale to the argument, although it's ultimately wrong), but LLVM would be aptly considered a split, and it's a split that has had a huge impact. Lattner begins working on LLVM, a code generator. He and his advisor publish a paper "Architecture for a Next-Generation GCC" <https://llvm.org/pubs/2003-05-01-GCCSummit2003.html https://llvm.org/pubs/2003-05-01-GCCSummit2003.html>. When he considers this work sufficiently mature, Lattner attempts to donate it to the FSF and get it into mainline GCC, but he gets rebuffed. Apple, who has taken an interest and is his employer by that point, really wants LLVM to be a thing, though, so two years later, they announce Clang and eventually turn out an entire compiler toolchain. It transforms from the original LLVM per se into what people mean when they say "LLVM" today: the work at llvm.org—which, again, all started from what was expected to be a replacement for GCC's code generator.

beervirus 5y ago

This seems to be about assignments from the individuals though, not their employers.

CRConrad 5y ago
The question is whether the stuff to be assigned (or not) belongs to the individuals or their employers. An assignment from someone who isn't actually entitled to assign away something (because they don't own it in the first place) is useless.

viraptor 5y ago

I'm not sure I understand this idea. Whether you assign the rights to FSF or not, the situation is not different. (For the project) If the employer owns the rights, the copyright assignment is illegal and void - the employee never had the right to do it. It's a bigger hassle for the employee who lied, but gcc would be in the same situation. "That way they are absolutely sure that there will never be a problem." just doesn't seem correct in that case.

skissane 5y ago
> If the employer owns the rights, the copyright assignment is illegal and void - the employee never had the right to do it Is that actually true though? Suppose Alice has a full-time job with HyperSuperMegaSoft. Alice writes a patch to IndependentSoftwareFoundation's FooBolCompiler. When Alice submits the patch to IndependentSoftwareFoundation, she warrants to IndependentSoftwareFoundation that she has the right to do so. Years later, HyperSuperMegaSoft decides to sue IndependentSoftwareFoundation for including Alice's patch in their FooBolCompiler, because they claim Alice never got proper internal approval (under HyperSuperMegaSoft's internal policies and procedures) to submit the patch. Is a court going to invalidate Alice's agreement with IndependentSoftwareFoundation because Alice didn't follow the right internal procedures with her employer? Or will the court decide that IndependentSoftwareFoundation shouldn't be punished for Alice's mistake, that HyperSuperMegaSoft is bound by Alice's actions as their employee even if they didn't approve of them, that IndependentSoftwareFoundation has the right to use the software under the agreement, and that HyperSuperMegaSoft can't successfully sue IndependentSoftwareFoundation (or FooBolCompiler's end-users)–they may still be able to successfully sue Alice for violating her employment contract (although that probably is far less an attractive proposition to HyperSuperMegaSoft than suing IndependentSoftwareFoundation is.) IANAL so I don't know what the right answer is. (The right answer probably depends on the jurisdiction.) But I get the impression some people assume that HyperSuperMegaSoft would automatically win against IndependentSoftwareFoundation, possibly without having good justification for that assumption.
- viraptor 5y ago
  > invalidate Alice's agreement with IndependentSoftwareFoundation because Alice didn't follow the right internal procedures with her employer? Internal procedures are not the law. The contacts are. If the contract says her software belongs to the company, then it does. (Unless the country law says otherwise of course) In the same way I can't legally sell you a copy of Windows license that I totally promise I've got an agreement with MS about. It's not a license I have rights to.

dheera 5y ago

On a radiant note, I wonder what would happen if one used the Free Art License or Creative Commons ShareAlike for code? They're nice and simple licenses, and programming is an art.

Macha 5y ago
Creative Commons explicitly warn against using Creative Commons licenses for software: > We recommend against using Creative Commons licenses for software. Instead, we strongly encourage you to use one of the very good software licenses which are already available > Unlike software-specific licenses, CC licenses do not contain specific terms about the distribution of source code, which is often important to ensuring the free reuse and modifiability of software. Many software licenses also address patent rights, which are important to software but may not be applicable to other copyrightable works. Additionally, our licenses are currently not compatible with the major software licenses, so it would be difficult to integrate CC-licensed work with other free software. Existing software licenses were designed specifically for use with software and offer a similar set of rights to the Creative Commons licenses. https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-commons-license-to-software https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-comm...

linuxhansl 5y ago

IANAL but an employee generally does not have to just contribute work related code. The company has to OK it either for specific contributions or as a blanket policy, but it's opt in. Then there is a secondary question on whether you contribute the code under a specific license (say Apache 2.0 GPL, etc.) or whether you assign the copyright. In the former case the code can only be used in accordance with that specific license, in the latter case the code can be re-licensed by the copyright holder. In either case the company could claim that the employee did not have the right to contribute the code, but (AFAIK) that is independent of a copyright grant vs license grant.

cryptonector 5y ago

By far the most important reason to require copyright assignment is to retain the ability to change the license at will. You don't need copyright assignment for the case you mention: you can require that an officer of the employer make the contribution, or that the contribution be in the name of the employer.

varispeed 5y ago

It is worth mentioning, that people are unaware that often the code they create after work, in their own spare time is actually owned by their employer. I think this should be illegal and if employer claims ownership of your time outside of working hours, they should be required to pay accordingly, perhaps with out of office extra rates. Unfortunately there is not much a poor employee can do against a multi billion company that avoids tax and has more money to spend on lawyers than some smaller countries could...

CRConrad 5y ago
A) Only (or at least, almost only) in America. B) Not even everywhere in America, I think -- ISTR reading about how employment terms like that are illegal in some state(s?).