copyright assignment

[Marc Mutz]

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Hi!

One of the more important things that KDE e.V. could do is to take the 
copyright of KDE's source code to some extend. At the Hamburg meeting, 
I was told that copyright assignment is not possible under German law.

I now know, however (after talking with some FSFE people), that you can 
assign the _right to execute your copyright_ to someone else (that's 
probably what every musician does when she signs a contract with the 
music industry), albeit not for future uses (but what should source 
code be used for that's not known yet?).

We already do the same for the KDE trademarks.

Why would one want to assign those rights to KDE e.V.?
So that they can be defended properly. If someone vilolates the GPL 
nature of code in the KDE distribution, we might want to fight the 
violation. But if the copyright on e.g. KMail is distributed among say 
20 developers, half of which haven't been seen on a KDE list for months 
if not years, how do you want to defend the license? AFAIK, you'd need 
to get the consent of each and every copyright holder. Impossible by 
now.

Marc

-- 
They [RIAA,MPAA] are trying to invent a new crime:
interference with a business model.
                           --Bruce Schneier, Crypto-Gram 08/2002

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