[kde-guidelines] Licenses

[Lauri Watts]

On Monday 04 October 2004 21.58, zander at kde.org wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 04, 2004 at 01:23:25PM -0600, Aaron Seigo wrote:
> > On October 4, 2004 12:50, zander at kde.org wrote:
> > > Note that it is also possible to make a contract between author and kde
> > > e.v. (which is needed in case of copyright assignment as you propose as
> > > well) and have shared copyright.
> >
> > something like this: http://www.openoffice.org/licenses/jca.pdf , right?
>
> Yap, thats the concept.
>
> Note that I'm not sure why copyright assignment would be a good thing
> though, just that if copyright assignemnt is going to be used, I'd
> appreciate a shared copyright more.

The FDL specifically grants the rights to the copyright holder to republish 
their work as they see fit, anywhere else, while also granting the right to 
make modifications as they see fit.

See here for the full text of it (or look in any KDE documentation, in the 
"credits and license" section) 
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html

In particular for those who don't feel like reading an entire legal document, 
here's the first paragraph:
"The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other 
functional and useful document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure 
everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without 
modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this 
License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their 
work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by 
others. "

I'm not sure that copyright assignment is of any major benefit here - I 
personally prefer to retain copyright to content I write (not that I expect 
to actually be writing any of this one, I'm just noting the fact.)  

My understanding in the graphics world,  is that copyright can only be 
assigned (and is automatically reassigned) only in the situation of 
work-for-hire (and there is a specific meaning of that term, and it simply 
doesn't apply to voluntary work done for an open source project, since it 
involves work done on behalf of your employer, during the specific term of a 
contract.)  

Copyright is actually pretty hard to get rid of in such a way that you can't 
claim back rights to use your own work as you see fit, and if the license 
already allows free re-use of the content, what's the point of complicating 
things?

Parenthetically yours,
-- 
Lauri Watts
KDE Documentation: http://docs.kde.org
KDE on FreeBSD: http://freebsd.kde.org
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