No, it has to be exclusive. Shared copyright doesn't work in practice. There is however nothing strange or unusual going on here, because FSF has the same solution for their contributors. The real problem here is that IP laws aren't well suited for open software.

/ Martin Nilsson (ja till euro, nej till cent)

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2003-09-11 11:55: Subject: IDA's policy on Pike contributions

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...

If I undesrtand this right, it basically means that I can't use my code anymore as I wish (and lose my copyright), once it is officially accepted and used in Pike.

In worst case, you can still use it under the MPL/GPL/LGPL like anyone else of course. It doesn't seem to say that the copyright has to be exclusive though. So i think shared copyright is ok, i.e. you keep copyright _and_ assign it to IDA, so that both may use it as they wish.

/ Marcus Comstedt (ACROSS) (Hail Ilpalazzo!)

You remember wrongly. This is an excerpt from the FSF legal agreement that is used to cover current and future contributions from a person:

1.(a) Developer hereby agrees to assign and does hereby assign to FSF Developer's copyright in changes and/or enhancements to the program <name of program> (herein called the Program). These changes and/or enhancements are herein called the Works.

And:

(d) FSF agrees to grant back to Developer, and does hereby grant, non-exclusive, royalty-free and non-cancellable rights to use the Works (i.e., Developer's changes and/or enhancements, not the Program that they enhance), as Developer sees fit; this grant back does not limit FSF's rights and public rights acquired through this agreement.

(e) FSF has all the rights of a copyright owner in the assigned copyrights, subject to the license grantback to developer stated above, including the right to enforce the copyright in aid of the free software purposes of this agreement, and the right to use, license and distribute the works, or works based on the works, with the program enhanced thereby or as stand-alone modules, all as made or acquired by developer or in modified form. FSF may charge a fee of its choosing for the service of distribution.

(This excerpt might come from a bit dated version of the agreement, but I'm certain this fundamental construction hasn't changed.)

/ Martin Stjernholm, Roxen IS

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2003-09-11 15:30: Subject: Re: IDA's policy on Pike contributions

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On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 08:55:05AM -0400, Martin Nilsson (ja till euro, nej till cent) @ Pike (-) developers forum wrote:

...

There is however nothing strange or unusual going on here, because FSF has the same solution for their contributors. The real problem here is

As I remember, they don't claim copyright on contributions. I must give away my work but I still own the copyright (so I can use it everywhere as I wish, at least until it is independent from FSF software).

In case of IDA it is [seems?] different - I will lose my right to my work. A bit ridiculous, especially taking into account that Pike is distributed under GPL...

Regards, /Al

/ Brevbäraren

I can't see any from a legal standpoint. What would that be?

There's perhaps some difference in the general politeness; "claim" sounds a bit presumptuous.

/ Martin Stjernholm, Roxen IS

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2003-09-11 15:49: Subject: Re: IDA's policy on Pike contributions

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On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 09:40:02AM -0400, Martin Stjernholm, Roxen IS @ Pike developers forum wrote:

...

(e) FSF has all the rights of a copyright owner in the assigned copyrights, subject to the license grantback to developer stated

I think that "has all the rights" is _quite_ different to IDA's "claim copyright"...

Regards, /Al

/ Brevbäraren

You don't keep the copyright for contributions you send to the FSF either, but if you assign it to them, they in return give you the right to do essentially whatever you want with the code that was yours.

The situation is the same with Pike. The policy page should be more explicit on that, though.

/ Martin Stjernholm, Roxen IS

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2003-09-11 16:20: Subject: Re: IDA's policy on Pike contributions

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On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 10:00:50AM -0400, Martin Stjernholm, Roxen IS @ Pike developers forum wrote:

...

I can't see any from a legal standpoint. What would that be?

As a copyright holder I've full rights to my work (code), so I can do whatever I want to (regardless of anyone else). In case if I lose my copyright I lose all my rights to the work (code), so I can not use as I wish anymore. Or?

...

There's perhaps some difference in the general politeness; "claim" sounds a bit presumptuous.

"claim" sounds like I've to give away something to someone else and forget about any rights.

Regards, /Al

/ Brevbäraren

The policy is for contributions. The things mentioned in COPYRIGHT were not contributed, but are used under license.

/ Marcus Comstedt (ACROSS) (Hail Ilpalazzo!)

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2003-09-11 16:46: Subject: Re: IDA's policy on Pike contributions

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On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 10:35:01AM -0400, Martin Stjernholm, Roxen IS @ Pike developers forum wrote:

...

The situation is the same with Pike. The policy page should be more explicit on that, though.

Hmm... Well, if anybody who makes a contribution to Pike must give away his copyright to IDA, what all those copyrights in COPYRIGHT mean? Kind of contradiction to policy...

And yes, it would be nice if this policy page will be more explicit (and perhaps explained)...

Reagrds, /Al

/ Brevbäraren

Where on the policy page did you find such a definition?

/ Marcus Comstedt (ACROSS) (Hail Ilpalazzo!)

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2003-09-11 17:04: Subject: Re: IDA's policy on Pike contributions

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On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 10:50:02AM -0400, Marcus Comstedt (ACROSS) (Hail Ilpalazzo!) @ Pike (-) developers forum wrote:

...

The policy is for contributions. The things mentioned in COPYRIGHT were not contributed, but are used under license.

If everything that gets there via CVS is considered to be a contribution (by definition - on policy page), I am curious where all this licensed code come from...

Regards, /Al

/ Brevbäraren

That still doesn't mean that there isn't people with CVS access under another agreement.

But it is an error that they are non negotiable. Everything is. That's too strong wording from jhs' part.

/ Martin Nilsson (ja till euro, nej till cent)

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2003-09-11 17:15: Subject: Re: IDA's policy on Pike contributions

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On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 11:10:02AM -0400, Marcus Comstedt (ACROSS) (Hail Ilpalazzo!) @ Pike (-) developers forum wrote:

...

Where on the policy page did you find such a definition?

There are few. First of all, "rules are non negotiable". Second, there is a phrase: "To get write access to the Pike CVS repository, we require:", where one of requirements is discussed topic. Isn't this "by definition"?

Regards, /Al

/ Brevbäraren

On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 11:30:01AM -0400, Marcus Comstedt (ACROSS) (Hail Ilpalazzo!) @ Pike (-) developers forum wrote:

"Rules are non negotiable" does not define what a contribution is.

OK. Where I can get the definition of "contribution"? What is considered to be a contribution and what is not?

Regards, /Al

On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 12:20:05PM -0400, Marcus Comstedt (ACROSS) (Hail Ilpalazzo!) @ Pike (-) developers forum wrote:

A contribution is code or documentation submitted by an extrernal developer for inclusion into the Pike distribution.

OK. Thanks. Now I know that it is better to keep my code away from IDA...

Regards, /Al

Maybee we should have a page on pike.ida.liu.se for third party modules?

/ Peter Lundqvist (disjunkt)

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2003-09-11 18:32: Subject: Re: IDA's policy on Pike contributions

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On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 12:20:05PM -0400, Marcus Comstedt (ACROSS) (Hail Ilpalazzo!) @ Pike (-) developers forum wrote:

...

A contribution is code or documentation submitted by an extrernal developer for inclusion into the Pike distribution.

OK. Thanks. Now I know that it is better to keep my code away from IDA...

Regards, /Al

/ Brevbäraren

Absolutely. But it probably needs someone working on just that... :/

/ Mirar

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2003-09-13 11:24: Subject: Re: IDA's policy on Pike contributions

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Maybee we should have a page on pike.ida.liu.se for third party modules?

/ Peter Lundqvist (disjunkt)

On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 11:35:02AM -0400, Martin Nilsson (ja till euro, nej till cent) @ Pike (-) developers forum wrote:

I would like to point out the design goals of the cvs access rules; To ensure the integrity of the source tree with a minimum of intervention required from the cvs maintainer.

Honestly, I see no relationship between integrity of source tree and giving away copyright...

If you are not in a position to hand over the copyright for a checkin then there are most likely a need for thorough analysis of licenses.

It depends. If my contribution is trivial (like bugfixes), it makes no difference. If it is not trivial (or significant, or contains some code which is used somewhere else, etc) - I would like to keep my copyright, of course. That's why I started this discussion - to understand what is what.

Regards, /Al

On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 11:10:02AM -0400, Martin Nilsson (ja till euro, nej till cent) @ Pike (-) developers forum wrote:

It was already in the CVS when we wrote the rules.

So the policy was different?

code that you would like to include under other arrangements than the standard one, please tell us why it is worth the legal trouble and we'll see what we can do.

I see no legal trouble at all if I will keep the copyright and license the contributed code under GPL/MPL/LGPL.

But I worry that IDA will claim copyright (and ownership) on my contribution. I just don't like this, when someone want to own something made by me :)

Regards, /Al

On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 11:40:03AM -0400, Martin Stjernholm, Roxen IS @ Pike developers forum wrote:

Not that it would limit you in any way in practice.

I don't want to be in situation "SCO vs. IBM" one day (regardless of who is right - it takes time, nerves and money), because of those legal issues. That's why I dislike the idea of giving away copyright.

If you feel that way you can't contribute to the FSF either.

This is the reason why I don't.

Regards, /Al

On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 12:30:02PM -0400, Martin Nilsson (ja till euro, nej till cent) @ Pike (-) developers forum wrote:

And we don't want to be in a "SCO vs. the world" situation one day.

What is wrong if I keep the copyright but license the code under GPL/MPL/LGPL? That is the problem of SCO, btw - since they distributed Linux they cannot claim that this was illegal.

I only want to be sure that I still can use my code as I wish, where I wish and under conditions that I wish; and I want to be credited as the author if my contribution is significant. If I license the code to IDA, I give them right to do whatever they want, but I don't want to give them right to claim that this is _their own_ code. That's all.

Regards, /Al

Nor is it in our best interest to do so, or in our interest at all, for that matter. :-)

However, it might be relevant to point out that we will not have small islands of code floating around in Pike that are territorially marked, be it with banners or otherwise. Code you write will most likely be maintained and improved on by several other developers long after you have forgotten about it, and the territorial marks may make people shy to do so, which we prefer to avoid.

In practice though, certain substantial contributions such as the Calendar module still bear the scent of their original authors (in this case Mirardoc rather than autodoc, since he would not have it otherwise and we treasure his continuing interest in maintaining it). In this case it is not formally written anywhere since neither party is particularly fond of legal documents, but for other substantial contributors we could most likely be persuaded into other agreements.

The blanket CVS access clauses intentionally does not regulate that; it would needlessly make Pike management difficult for us maintainers, and side-stepping the rules we set up ourselves is always possible if needed.

/ Johan Sundström, Lysator

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2003-09-11 18:50: Subject: Re: IDA's policy on Pike contributions

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On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 06:40:31PM +0200, Alexander Demenshin wrote:

...

If I license the code to IDA, I give them right to do whatever they want, but I don't want to give them right to claim that this is _their own_ code. That's all.

are you doing that? all they will claim is that it is code of the pike development team. by contributing you are becoming part of that team.

they are not taking away your right to claim that the code was written by you (they can't because that right is not transferable (at least in germany and austria))

greetings, martin.

/ Brevbäraren

The problem is that Pike used to be GPL. Now it's also MPL and LGPL. At least LGPL is less restrictive. The change of licensing was in this case a bit dubious because Roxen had NOT kept a list of all contributors and what code they had contributed (and there was never individual emails asking contributors if their code could be relicensed as far as I know). There was also no clause saying that all submitted code had its copyright transferred to Roxen.

Another smaller project with similar voes is physfs. It was licensed under LGPL. At some point it became apparent that this license was too restrictive (some Playstation 2 developer wanted to use the code bug couldn't due to the license). Also Ryan Gordon had not required all code to be signed over to him (in terms of copyright). Thus he had to ask all contributors (of which he at least had a good list of who they were and what they contributed) if a change from LGPL to a zlib-like license was ok. Despite being a small project with not all that many contributors, several didn't respond or couldn't be reached, so he had to remove code they had contributed (although I think in the end most did approve of the change). Had the copyright been signed over to Ryan to begin with, there would have been no issue here at all.

I guess my point is that keeping track of individual authors for a project this size, not to mention keeping track of which code they wrote would be a nightmare (physfs is smallish and well-separated). The only other option is to require the copyright to be signed over.

Of course, if you created a new file format and wrote a loader for it, which you also incorporated into Pike, I doubt that the non-incorporated code couldn't be used by yourself in any way you wish under any license. Only the code in the Pike CVS is actually owned by IDA. Now as it is today, this actually might not be the case (in the wording) but if it isn't, I think it should be. I'm not a laywer and haven't read the rules well enough to know (and I don't care - what I write for Pike is pretty Pike specific).

/ David Hedbor

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2003-09-11 18:41: Subject: Re: IDA's policy on Pike contributions

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On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 12:30:02PM -0400, Martin Nilsson (ja till euro, nej till cent) @ Pike (-) developers forum wrote:

...

And we don't want to be in a "SCO vs. the world" situation one day.

What is wrong if I keep the copyright but license the code under GPL/MPL/LGPL? That is the problem of SCO, btw - since they distributed Linux they cannot claim that this was illegal.

I only want to be sure that I still can use my code as I wish, where I wish and under conditions that I wish; and I want to be credited as the author if my contribution is significant. If I license the code to IDA, I give them right to do whatever they want, but I don't want to give them right to claim that this is _their own_ code. That's all.

Regards, /Al

/ Brevbäraren

...

It was already in the CVS when we wrote the rules.

So the policy was different?

(Sorry about the lengthiness, but I felt some recent history was called for.)

Much worse still, there were no policies whatsoever, and the legal status of the whole of Pike was [to an outsider] fuzzy at best. The former legal entity in charge of the repository (present day Roxen IS) considered themselves in ownership of the whole of Pike, but there was no official way of contributing to Pike except for becoming a Roxen employee. Many possible contributions were lost due to the sheer trouble of getting in contact with a person that could say yes or no to anything above a small patch.

So much for the history we wanted to improve on when moving Pike to IDA. As Nilsson points out, the CVS access agreement aims for rules that simplifies managing the repository. The perhaps most important part of that is to allow changes to Pike that requires full ownership - and without getting in touch with countless individual contributors.

The contribution policies aim for being simple both to understand and put to practice. They are however not written in stone, as they might seem. Some especially inappropriate wordings should and will change for the better - that is in my opinion what discussions such as this are good for.

I hope you have not already withdrawn from the thread feeling there is nothing more in it, nor the Pike development, for you.

/ Johan Sundström, Lysator

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2003-09-11 17:22: Subject: Re: IDA's policy on Pike contributions

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On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 11:10:02AM -0400, Martin Nilsson (ja till euro, nej till cent) @ Pike (-) developers forum wrote:

...

It was already in the CVS when we wrote the rules.

So the policy was different?

...

code that you would like to include under other arrangements than the standard one, please tell us why it is worth the legal trouble and we'll see what we can do.

I see no legal trouble at all if I will keep the copyright and license the contributed code under GPL/MPL/LGPL.

But I worry that IDA will claim copyright (and ownership) on my contribution. I just don't like this, when someone want to own something made by me :)

Regards, /Al

/ Brevbäraren

Arranging for an automatic grant-back of the free and unrestricted use of your own contributions sounds like an ideal solution to me too. If nobody sees a reason why it wouldn't work, I think we should try to make some writeup along those lines.

Regarding the ego boost I would first like to hear that it is an important factor for people before we explicitly encourage it. As it is, such decorations have intentionally been removed from some files when we added the short general Pike info clause you find in most Pike files around the place.

/ Johan Sundström, Lysator

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2003-09-11 19:08: Subject: Re: IDA's policy on Pike contributions

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I apoligize in advance for the length of this post. This is exactly the type of problem a policy like this is designed to avoid. You might be worried about losing your rights, but IDA is equally justified in worrying about theirs.

For example, you might remember a while back an attempt by the mozilla organization to change some of the licensing terms on the source tree. Because contributors were not required to assign the copyright to a central entity, each and every copyright holder had to be contacted regarding the proposed changes. Surely you can imagine what happened when a few years passed and the only contact information you had was a name and a [no longer working] email address.

As far as I can see, there are two possible problems with the current policy (not that I have a problem with it as is):

1. Free and unrestricted use of my contributions (and only my

contributions).

2. Ego (IMHO a silly reason not to contribute).

I think #1 could be solved by an automatic (non-exclusive, non-terminable, non-restricted) license grantback for contributions. Is this a possibility?

Number 2 is a little bit trickier, but if you're talking about a relatively major contribution, what's wrong with putting your name in the source header? Something like this (taken from lib/modules/Protocols.pmod/LPD.pmod):

// This is a module for pike. // 3 July 1998 hww3@riverweb.com Bill Welliver // // $Id: LPD.pmod,v 1.8 2002/06/17 10:54:29 mast Exp $ // $Id: LPD.pmod,v 1.9 2002/06/17 11:46:58 grubba Exp $ //

I get credit for writing it, but it's copyrighted by IDA.

Now, I can certainly understand one's nervousness about the tendencies of lawyers (particularly when you're dating an ip lawyer :)). However, if you've got #1 covered and documentation in hand, what more can you do?

Bill

...

So much for the history we wanted to improve on when moving Pike to IDA. As Nilsson points out, the CVS access agreement aims for rules that simplifies managing the repository. The perhaps most important part of that is to allow changes to Pike that requires full ownership

• and without getting in touch with countless individual contributors.

/ Brevbäraren

As I recall it, we stripped lengthy banners in some places, though.

/ Johan Sundström, Lysator

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2003-09-11 19:30: Subject: Re: IDA's policy on Pike contributions

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No, the original author has not been removed from any files AFAIK.

/ Martin Nilsson (ja till euro, nej till cent)

No. A pointer to the conveyor of the original designer, as Bill points out, can actually be rather useful.

/ Johan Sundström, Lysator

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2003-09-11 20:31: Subject: Re: IDA's policy on Pike contributions

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Yep. That is not the same thing as removing the information from the file though.

/ Martin Nilsson (ja till euro, nej till cent)

On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 01:30:04PM -0400, Johan Sundstrцm, Lysator @ Pike developers forum wrote:

Arranging for an automatic grant-back of the free and unrestricted use of your own contributions sounds like an ideal solution to me too. If nobody sees a reason why it wouldn't work, I think we should try to make some writeup along those lines.

This is perfectly OK with me. Exactly what I wanted :)

important factor for people before we explicitly encourage it. As it is, such decorations have intentionally been removed from some files when we added the short general Pike info clause you find in most

As of me, I don't care if something that I did isn't marked, especially smart parts, patches, fixes etc. What I am interested in that something really _big_ (not huge but remarkable) will be marked, still (i.e., if I contributed a module which is new, my copyright will be there).

Regards, /Al

On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 02:48:12PM -0400, Bill Welliver wrote:

Having your name listed as a major or original author of a contribution is a much different thing than having "your copyright" included.

This is OK too. As long as I can do whatever I want with my code, and as long as my authorship is marked, I don't care.

Regards, /Al

To date we have not asked anyone to sign any papers, nor suggested any change, that I know of. Or, put more directly: what are you talking about?

We do not like paperwork any more than you do. Should you want to contribute, you are welcome to do so under the same terms as anyone else. There is even a big chance those terms will be a bit overhauled soon to grant everybody who abide by them already and in the future rights to do anything they want with their own contributions. :-) Just some good wordings missing, for the moment. This time I won't try to formulate them all on my own, as Nilsson hinted I might have done the last time around. :-)

/ Johan Sundström, Lysator

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2003-09-11 21:12: Subject: Re: IDA's policy on Pike contributions

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i guess the conference would be a good place to do the papersigning without any mailing back and forth.

will people from IDA who are permitted to sign be at the conference?

i always hate paperwork, and while i don't have anything significant to contribute to the code now, the mere fact that paperwork has to be done before i can contribute is likely to stop me from doing so unless i get pushed really hard...

greetings, martin.

/ Brevbäraren

Not as weak as you might think. You can not check in code without either having cvs access or crack the system (which is illegal). We don't hand out access to people unless they agree to the discussed terms. Unlike FSF the Pike repository is subject to swedish law, and more importantly, swedish courts, and they are typically not interested in even a hearing unless you can demonstrate with hard facts that we would let you use our system without agreeing to our terms.

/ Martin Nilsson (ja till euro, nej till cent)

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2003-09-11 22:03: Subject: Re: IDA's policy on Pike contributions

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On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 03:25:01PM -0400, Johan Sundström, Lysator @ Pike developers forum wrote:

...

To date we have not asked anyone to sign any papers, nor suggested any change, that I know of. Or, put more directly: what are you talking about?

you are saying that you assume the terms to be agreed upon without actually putting it into writing?

i am suggesting that puts you onto very weak ground. you will actually have to proove that the contributor knew and agreed to the conditions. thats a lot easier to do if it is in writing.

i am quite sure something as drastic as sighning over copyright would not have any stand in court otherwise.

the FSF does require the signover in writing and signed. and i assumed you would make it no different.

greetings, martin.

/ Brevbäraren

let me continue to play the devils advocate for a bit more...

On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 04:30:01PM -0400, Johan Sundström, Lysator @ Pike developers forum wrote:

Swedish law is a long shot from American law when it comes to applying sane reasoning. :)

i am not refering to american 'in'-sane reasoning, but rather to eg. german (and i assume swedish) reasoning which in my opinion favours the rights of individuals over those of organizations, as organizations are in a much better position to dictate terms

the more uncommon an agreement is, the more likely it is that an individual missunderstood the rights it has, the more likely that such an individual will be favoured in a court decision.

some contracts are not even enforcible unless you can undouptedly prove that both parties agreed to it.

you also have to be very carefull that this contract is actually in the agreement with the law.

eg. it was mentioned that names are removed from code. according to the german urheberrecht certain rights are not transferable at all. these include the right to have my name associated with my work. (in other words, you may not remove names from the source. (note that while it turned out that you don't do that anyways, there was some doubt, so in the name of safety better make that clear))

i agree that if anyone wants to make trouble there will be problems no matter what.

greetings, martin.

i am not sure this is enough. (otherwise the FSF would handle it this way too.

an interresting paper to read on this topic is: http://www.ifross.de/ifross_html/art30.pdf

in particular it explains that for countries that have a system similar to the german urrheberrecht (which are all european countries except great britain) it is not enough to simply assign all rights (because not all rights can be assigned). therefore it is necessary to specifically mention each right that is to be assigned because any such contract is to be interpreted as restrictive as possible in favour of the original author. it is also necessary to clearly state which rights stay with the author to make sure the contract stays valid. (if the contract has invalid parts, all may be lost)

unfortunately it's in german.

there maybe more on: http://www.ifross.de/

greetings, martin.

hasn't it been stated before that the reasons for the copyright assignment of the FSF and IDA are the same: namely, to defend the copyright against abuse?

read the link i gave. it clearly suggests why assigning the copyright is better for the defense.

greetings, martin.

This sidesteps your direct question a bit, but I thought the preceding discussion had already concluded that a back grant system would give the contributor the wanted rights to his work. Is there any point in continuing a "why? - why not the other way? - why?" thread?

If we are to implement a generic back grant system, it is much, much easier to implement it centrally and in the exact same fashion for each and every present and future developer of Pike, than to have them each arrange their own way of defering or otherwise transfering the rights to their contributions to IDA.

It would probably also mean that each individual party's agreement would be handled under local juristiction by their own law system. Such a system would be doomed bog down and die under its own weight, making the administrative burden of even adding a single developer tough, let alone all present developers. It would become an immense struggle we just don't have the resources to execute.

/ Johan Sundström, Lysator

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2003-09-12 00:55: Subject: Re: IDA's policy on Pike contributions

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On Fri, Sep 12, 2003 at 12:28:09AM +0200, Martin Baehr wrote:

...

i am not sure this is enough. (otherwise the FSF would handle it this way too.

Not necessary. They may have their own reasons not to do so. In any case, if IDA can give me a back-grant, why I can't do the same to IDA?

Regards, /Al

/ Brevbäraren

but it there is choice offered to everybody, the whole exercise becomes meaningless.

in order to defend the rights without complications, ALL rights must be with IDA. offering choice will result in NOT ALL rights being with IDA, therefore adding complications should the need to defend copyright ever arise.

as it has been said before (if i read that right) exceptions will be made, but only within reason. present your contribution and they will decide if it is reason enough to let you keep all rights.

(devil speaking again) besides, what are you worried about, a blanket statement like: i hereby transfer all rights on my pike contributions to IDA will have not much weight in court, as they will interpret that as restrictive as possible, as transfering all rights is simply not legal.

greetings, martin.

On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 03:58:58PM +0200, Martin Baehr wrote:

quote: signing the assignment does not stop you from distributing the program yourself--as long as you do so under the GNU terms

Exactly. But what if I want to use my contribution (which is by itself might be useful) somewhere else? I am not talking about work as a whole (program _and_ my contribution), I am talking about my contribution _only_.

Say, I wrote a module for Pike, it gets into "official" distribution, and basically IDA's claim means that this modules is now _their_, not mine.

But by itself, I can use this module (or at least its parts) without distributing (or even using) Pike, and (say) place restrictions on it's distribution etc.

Regards, /Al

On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 11:00:01AM -0400, Martin Nilsson (ja till euro, nej till cent) @ Pike (-) developers forum wrote:

then the module is owned by IDA, which IDA in turn distribute under MPL, GPL and LGPL. I can't honestly think of a single scenario when this isn't enough.

Is is not when I've another plans to my module. But because IDA will own the module I can forget about this (or eventually, once I'll try to use my code somewhere else, under different terms, I could be sued for using IP of IDA - or do I understand copyright wrong?).

Regards, /Al

That is correct. There are however no problems to add an FSF style grant back, since we've never actually considered suing someone for using his code.

/ Martin Nilsson (ja till euro, nej till cent)

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2003-09-11 17:15: Subject: Re: IDA's policy on Pike contributions

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So I take it there's actually no grant-back as in the FSF case? Then it's probably necessary to explain how the use of MPL or LGPL makes the absence of that a no real restriction.

I believe it would be simpler to have an FSF-style grant-back. That would probably feel more free for the contributor.

/ Martin Stjernholm, Roxen IS