12 ms·

Is the distinction here really germane? If someone else holds an exclusive, transferrable, perpetual, sublicensable license to a work you produced, that's more

Is the distinction here really germane? If someone else holds an exclusive, transferrable, perpetual, sublicensable license to a work you produced, that's more or less the same as holding the copyright from LLVM's perspective. Of course all this only matters if they encounter a situation where it is difficult to determine the rightsholder, and they are not able to obtain agreement from all potential holders, and there ends up being a dispute.

brnt 5y ago
In such jurisdiction, copyright attributions/assignments are simply not legally possible. We've had to scrap the one in place for on of our projects. The type of contract you should have contributors from such jurisdictions sign is a license to use. If you haven't, getting 'permission' is meaningless; the author possibly (in my experience: probably) doesn't know they're actually not legally able to agree to such a change.
- judge2020 5y ago
  But if you grant a license that's sublicensable and exclusive (with all the extra legal rights granted), that's effectively transferring copyright since you can do everything you could as if you had transferred copyright.
  - shakna 5y ago
    However, in most jurisdictions where copyright is non-transferable, the original holder also permanently retains a right to cancel any such licensing agreement, at any time without cause. They cannot grant a license in perpetuity, and any language in the license to that effect has no legal weight whatsoever.
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
      As far as I can find online, this is an edge case that's unlikely to ever be relevant. Dutch law allows the voiding of licenses after "unreasonably long" terms. One suspects that it would be hard to show that a term is unreasonably long when you're talking about a contribution to open source software. In Poland, there's a limit of five years, on the author's wish, with one year's notice. Fair enough, a Polish contributor might possibly demand that their code be taken out of a projects with a year's notice. It seems unlikely that many Polish devs will exercise this right, since, if their contributions are significant, it would probably result in blacklisting, and if not significant, it would probably not be worth it. But I suppose it could happen. If it happened often, Polish devs would likely stop being welcome to contribute to open source projects. In Canada, there is automatic time-based reversion of rights 25 years after the author's death. So if you write code at 35, and die at 80, your estate could conceivably demand that your code could be removed from a project 70 years after you wrote it. Similarly, in the United States, you can revert your rights after going through some process and paying a fee after 35 years. The probability of any of these things happening seems sufficiently remote that it doesn't seem worth worrying about. Technically these CLAs might not actually grant perpetual licenses, but in practice they're likely close enough.
      - shakna 5y ago
        I don't think you've quite understood the risk, here. > Fair enough, a Polish contributor might possibly demand that their code be taken out of a projects with a year's notice. It seems unlikely that many Polish devs will exercise this right, since, if their contributions are significant, it would probably result in blacklisting, and if not significant, it would probably not be worth it. But I suppose it could happen. If it happened often, Polish devs would likely stop being welcome to contribute to open source projects. This is the same for Australian developers. This is also where the primary risk is, and it cannot be mitigated by _any_ copyright license. At any point in time the authour can revoke the license, which is an unlikely event, but because of how licensing works, they can revoke the license for _one individual or corporation_, as well. For example, it is conceivable that someone who has contributed to a large project, say... Linux, has an issue with one particular corporation who have been found to acting unethically, say... Google. They can revoke the right to use their contributions to the Linux kernel by Google. They don't have to supply a reason for it. This is thus far untested in court, but that is what the current copyright framework allows for. The developer may risk blackballing themselves, but they may also not care at all. They may do so by making it about idealism, in which case what they are capable of has little to do with their own personal future.
        asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
        > This is the same for Australian developers. I don't see any sign of this being the case in my searching. This document (https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=628b5bca-b7d5-492b-8b9f-ee5a755e7917 https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=628b5bca-b7d5...) suggests that Australia does recognize perpetual licenses ("Does the law in your jurisdiction recognise the validity of ‘perpetual’ software licences? ... Yes."). Would you provide a citation? > For example, it is conceivable that someone who has contributed to a large project, say... Linux, has an issue with one particular corporation who have been found to acting unethically, say... Google. They can revoke the right to use their contributions to the Linux kernel by Google. They don't have to supply a reason for it. As noted above, I'm skeptical that this right exists in Australia. But if it does, the worst that would happen is that a person's contributions would need to be removed from Linux. There are probably a handful of individuals who own the copyright to their works whose contributions would be difficult to replace, but most of them probably have sufficient economic or other incentives not to do something like what you're describing. That vast majority of new code written in Linux is written by employees of large corporations and isn't subject to this risk the same way. > This is thus far untested in court To say the least. It seems likely to me that courts in many jurisdictions would decide that an open source bait and switch was not what their corresponding legislatures had in mind when drafting license reversion rules. This risk seems unlikely to me, because you'd need a dev with plenty of wealth to pay lawyers, who also really hates some company beyond any practical economic extent, and also contributed a lot to Linux as a private individual. I don't know how many of that type of person you're going to find.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
  I imagine if this ever comes to bite projects in a big way, they'll move to the legal agreement of the type you suggest, and/or cease accepting contributions from the relevant jurisdictions. That being said, LLVM is not asking for a copyright contribution here. They are asking the contributors to sign an agreement, the meat of which is, "The Contributor authorizes LLVM to include the Contributions in the LLVM project, and the Contributor hereby licenses the Contributions under the terms of the Apache Software License, version 2.0, with the LLVM exception." That's not a copyright assignment. Other groups also do not ask for a copyright assignment. Here's from Google's CLA: "Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, You hereby grant to Google and to recipients of software distributed by Google a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute Your Contributions and such derivative works." In this agreement, you still own the copyright, but you've given Google a perpetual, worldwide, royalty free and sublicensable license, which means that Google could basically reexport your contributions under whatever license they want. Facebook/Meta's CLA is almost identical. They aren't excluding any countries from contributing, so presumably this type of language is sufficiently enforceable everywhere.

brnt 5y ago

In such jurisdiction, copyright attributions/assignments are simply not legally possible. We've had to scrap the one in place for on of our projects. The type of contract you should have contributors from such jurisdictions sign is a license to use. If you haven't, getting 'permission' is meaningless; the author possibly (in my experience: probably) doesn't know they're actually not legally able to agree to such a change.

judge2020 5y ago
But if you grant a license that's sublicensable and exclusive (with all the extra legal rights granted), that's effectively transferring copyright since you can do everything you could as if you had transferred copyright.
- shakna 5y ago
  However, in most jurisdictions where copyright is non-transferable, the original holder also permanently retains a right to cancel any such licensing agreement, at any time without cause. They cannot grant a license in perpetuity, and any language in the license to that effect has no legal weight whatsoever.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
    As far as I can find online, this is an edge case that's unlikely to ever be relevant. Dutch law allows the voiding of licenses after "unreasonably long" terms. One suspects that it would be hard to show that a term is unreasonably long when you're talking about a contribution to open source software. In Poland, there's a limit of five years, on the author's wish, with one year's notice. Fair enough, a Polish contributor might possibly demand that their code be taken out of a projects with a year's notice. It seems unlikely that many Polish devs will exercise this right, since, if their contributions are significant, it would probably result in blacklisting, and if not significant, it would probably not be worth it. But I suppose it could happen. If it happened often, Polish devs would likely stop being welcome to contribute to open source projects. In Canada, there is automatic time-based reversion of rights 25 years after the author's death. So if you write code at 35, and die at 80, your estate could conceivably demand that your code could be removed from a project 70 years after you wrote it. Similarly, in the United States, you can revert your rights after going through some process and paying a fee after 35 years. The probability of any of these things happening seems sufficiently remote that it doesn't seem worth worrying about. Technically these CLAs might not actually grant perpetual licenses, but in practice they're likely close enough.
    - shakna 5y ago
      I don't think you've quite understood the risk, here. > Fair enough, a Polish contributor might possibly demand that their code be taken out of a projects with a year's notice. It seems unlikely that many Polish devs will exercise this right, since, if their contributions are significant, it would probably result in blacklisting, and if not significant, it would probably not be worth it. But I suppose it could happen. If it happened often, Polish devs would likely stop being welcome to contribute to open source projects. This is the same for Australian developers. This is also where the primary risk is, and it cannot be mitigated by _any_ copyright license. At any point in time the authour can revoke the license, which is an unlikely event, but because of how licensing works, they can revoke the license for _one individual or corporation_, as well. For example, it is conceivable that someone who has contributed to a large project, say... Linux, has an issue with one particular corporation who have been found to acting unethically, say... Google. They can revoke the right to use their contributions to the Linux kernel by Google. They don't have to supply a reason for it. This is thus far untested in court, but that is what the current copyright framework allows for. The developer may risk blackballing themselves, but they may also not care at all. They may do so by making it about idealism, in which case what they are capable of has little to do with their own personal future.
      - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
        > This is the same for Australian developers. I don't see any sign of this being the case in my searching. This document (https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=628b5bca-b7d5-492b-8b9f-ee5a755e7917 https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=628b5bca-b7d5...) suggests that Australia does recognize perpetual licenses ("Does the law in your jurisdiction recognise the validity of ‘perpetual’ software licences? ... Yes."). Would you provide a citation? > For example, it is conceivable that someone who has contributed to a large project, say... Linux, has an issue with one particular corporation who have been found to acting unethically, say... Google. They can revoke the right to use their contributions to the Linux kernel by Google. They don't have to supply a reason for it. As noted above, I'm skeptical that this right exists in Australia. But if it does, the worst that would happen is that a person's contributions would need to be removed from Linux. There are probably a handful of individuals who own the copyright to their works whose contributions would be difficult to replace, but most of them probably have sufficient economic or other incentives not to do something like what you're describing. That vast majority of new code written in Linux is written by employees of large corporations and isn't subject to this risk the same way. > This is thus far untested in court To say the least. It seems likely to me that courts in many jurisdictions would decide that an open source bait and switch was not what their corresponding legislatures had in mind when drafting license reversion rules. This risk seems unlikely to me, because you'd need a dev with plenty of wealth to pay lawyers, who also really hates some company beyond any practical economic extent, and also contributed a lot to Linux as a private individual. I don't know how many of that type of person you're going to find.
asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
I imagine if this ever comes to bite projects in a big way, they'll move to the legal agreement of the type you suggest, and/or cease accepting contributions from the relevant jurisdictions. That being said, LLVM is not asking for a copyright contribution here. They are asking the contributors to sign an agreement, the meat of which is, "The Contributor authorizes LLVM to include the Contributions in the LLVM project, and the Contributor hereby licenses the Contributions under the terms of the Apache Software License, version 2.0, with the LLVM exception." That's not a copyright assignment. Other groups also do not ask for a copyright assignment. Here's from Google's CLA: "Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, You hereby grant to Google and to recipients of software distributed by Google a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute Your Contributions and such derivative works." In this agreement, you still own the copyright, but you've given Google a perpetual, worldwide, royalty free and sublicensable license, which means that Google could basically reexport your contributions under whatever license they want. Facebook/Meta's CLA is almost identical. They aren't excluding any countries from contributing, so presumably this type of language is sufficiently enforceable everywhere.