copyright assignment

[Andreas Pour]

Marc Mutz wrote:
> 
> 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. 

Not sure that is possible at this point - there are too many people who have
contributed code who can no longer be found.  The most ideal use would be to
permit some organization to re-license code if the GPL or other license is held
by a court to be invalid.  Currently that would raise tremendous problems for
the project (and most other large projects as well).

What would be nice though is to grant KDE eV the right to enforce a copyright,
or a license.

> 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.

I don't think you need a copyright assignment to defend a copyright, but it
would be worth looking into.

Ciao,

Dre