3 ms·

Unless the license agreement for contributing specifically says the author forfeits their copyright, but no open source licenses I know of do this.

Argorak 12y ago
This is impossible in certain jurisdictions.
- pyre 12y ago
  What's impossible? Reassigning copyright to the project maintainer?
  - Argorak 12y ago
    Exactly. Forfeiting copyright is not possible in some jurisdictions. I'm not sure what is unclear about a refutation of a single sentence.
    - vidarh 12y ago
      I'm presuming what you are referring to, and which is likely to confuse a predominantly English speaking audience is that a number of countries with legal systems typically based in Germanic or Napoleonic legal systems, copyright consists of the combination of moral rights on one side and economic rights on the other hand. Moral rights are generally impossible to forfeit and assign. Economic rights usually (I don't know of any jurisdictions where assigning economic rights to the project maintainer would be impossible - are you?) are possible to assign. In common law systems, the two are usually traditionally much more closely tied, and when we talk about copyright in English, it is usually the economic rights we're referring to.
stonemetal 12y ago
While there aren't any software licenses that do that, many projects do it as a condition of accepting contributions. As an example here is GCC's contributor documentation: https://gcc.gnu.org/contribute.html https://gcc.gnu.org/contribute.html The short version is assign FSF copyright, or put it in the public domain.
sgrove 12y ago
Isn't this generally what Contributor Agreements are for - not giving up copyright, but jointly assigning it? E.g. https://www.clahub.com/ https://www.clahub.com/ I know to contribute to Clojure/ClojureScript-proper, I had to sign http://clojure.org/contributing http://clojure.org/contributing

Argorak 12y ago

This is impossible in certain jurisdictions.

pyre 12y ago
What's impossible? Reassigning copyright to the project maintainer?
- Argorak 12y ago
  Exactly. Forfeiting copyright is not possible in some jurisdictions. I'm not sure what is unclear about a refutation of a single sentence.
  - vidarh 12y ago
    I'm presuming what you are referring to, and which is likely to confuse a predominantly English speaking audience is that a number of countries with legal systems typically based in Germanic or Napoleonic legal systems, copyright consists of the combination of moral rights on one side and economic rights on the other hand. Moral rights are generally impossible to forfeit and assign. Economic rights usually (I don't know of any jurisdictions where assigning economic rights to the project maintainer would be impossible - are you?) are possible to assign. In common law systems, the two are usually traditionally much more closely tied, and when we talk about copyright in English, it is usually the economic rights we're referring to.

stonemetal 12y ago

While there aren't any software licenses that do that, many projects do it as a condition of accepting contributions. As an example here is GCC's contributor documentation: https://gcc.gnu.org/contribute.html https://gcc.gnu.org/contribute.html The short version is assign FSF copyright, or put it in the public domain.

sgrove 12y ago

Isn't this generally what Contributor Agreements are for - not giving up copyright, but jointly assigning it? E.g. https://www.clahub.com/ https://www.clahub.com/ I know to contribute to Clojure/ClojureScript-proper, I had to sign http://clojure.org/contributing http://clojure.org/contributing