[Xorp-users] RFC: Explicitly note that new code contributions are copy-righted by the submitter.

Bruce Simpson bms at incunabulum.net
Sun Apr 25 02:53:20 PDT 2010


On 04/25/10 10:02, Mark Handley wrote:
> I think you've confused the license and the copyright.

They are overlapping issues. Only copyright holders can license what 
they own.

>    The current LICENSE file wording could be interpreted as granting copyright of new
> code to XORP, Inc.  This is not the intent, so we need to change the
> LICENSE file to avoid this being the case.

I have no objection to this; however, that which XORP, Inc. owned, is 
now owned by some other entity.

You are quite right to point out any code committed to the open source 
repository, under the GPL, cannot have the GPL revoked retrospectively. 
Copyright holders are of course free to license what they own as they 
see fit.

If people are happy with what this implies, so it goes.

I should point out that I was explicitly asked, by Marcia Bush, to 
assign copyright to XORPsource, Inc., as it was then known, for the OLSR 
code, and I did so.

This was only possible, because no works-for-hire clause was in effect 
for the work I performed on CenGen, Inc's behalf. I explicitly 
negotiated dropping that from their standard contract. I assigned 
copyright in each individual file to ICSI, as XORP was still hosted 
there at that time.



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