Copyright status

[Boudewijn Rempt]

On Saturday 26 June 2010, JL VT wrote:
> After writing this message I think this isn't a Krita-specific discussion,
> but I want to bring it up here to see what you all think before I talk
> about it elsewhere.
> I think the FSF summarizes my concern better than I could, so please read
> this fragment:
> 
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#AssignCopyright
> 
> Krita has a large number of contributors to many different files. Defending
> it in a court would be very difficult in its current state, so at the
> moment the enforcement of its license is just based on honor. I see many
> GPL programs pile up contributors, each owning a little piece of the
> software, eventually making the license hard to enforce against an
> hypothetical evil re-licenser (if he's evil, honor won't work!).
> 
> In that sense, isn't using a copyleft license a moot point after all?, It
> only places restrictions on people willing to respect it, not on the
> hypothetical evil corporate users wanting to steal the code. A non-copyleft
> license would be just as functional and more convenient to those willing to
> respect it, in all cases except when there is few and well identified
> copyright owners to a program (or just 1, for example an institution, like
> the FSF).

That is why the KDE e.V. has the fiduciary licensing agreement: 
http://ev.kde.org/rules/fla.php. I still don't think that having many 
copyright holders effectively makes enforcement impossible, but I am not a 
lawyer.


> On a sidenote:
> I remember Cyrille mentioned something about countries in Europe where a
> corporation couldn't own copyright over something. If you are reading this:
> what countries are those?.

France for certain, Germany too, I think. But it's not that companies cannot 
own copyright: it's that individuals cannot assign their copyright to someone 
else.

-- 
Boudewijn Rempt | http://www.valdyas.org