Re: [LAD] students and copyright

On Sunday 02 August 2009 07:56:41 Arnout Engelen wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 02, 2009 at 01:31:41PM +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> ...
>
> To distribute the code, you must either get the copyright on the work back,
> or get permission from the actual copyright holder (employer, institution)
> to do so.

Right.

The thing is I already have this (GPL) code that was distributed for the
program's earlier version with all these other people's names in the
copyright part. Then with the next version their names are all gone. The
GPL indicates that all copyrights must remain intact. Unless those people
transferred their copyrights, in a bilateral agreement of some sort, then
something seems to be incorrect.

Maybe those people did sign some kind of document, enter into some type
of agreement that does hand over the copyrights. I do not know, but it would
be helpful to have some evidence of this, sample of document indicating the
case, or hear from a few of the people involved that are named in the
copyrights.

The point of this would be to future-proof the code against violations by
settling these issues sooner than later. At present the documentation included
with the program does not specify anything about the situation relating listed
authors to copyrights. I think you can understand how it might seem that
something is amiss given different sets of source files for different versions
with altogether different copyrights then.

A little more details showing what the actual case is can prevent the issue
from arising again in the future. Possibly provide some explanation in a
readme file or help that is distributed with the application.

Just note that since the older source code has already been distributed,
with those other copyrights in place, it can continue to be distributed
with them intact and be modified and distributed in accord with the
GPL, as long as everything is legitimate.

Some more substance to the clarification on this point would be significantly
more helpful. Not only to users/developers, but to the original project
to ensure it can avoid future issues and questions surrounding points like
this.

Raymond

_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-dev mailing list
Linux-audio-dev@email-addr-hidden
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
Received on Sun Aug 2 16:15:05 2009