On Thu, 2006-06-22 at 13:26 +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> > >
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal
> > >
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.html
> > >
http://www.apache.org/licenses/icla.txt
> >
> > You can also look at it this way, a country is way easier to control by
> > a dictator than by some pesky parliament that always disagree with each
> > other. But still most people would rather not have a dictator in their
> > country. If people can not agree what to do about a copyright violation
> > of a common piece of software, maybe that's how it should be, maybe
> > creating a "dictator" by assigning all copyright to "him"
is not always
> > in the best interest of the community.
>
> Assigning copyrights doesnt require any dictator (individual) . You can
> very well assign copyrights to foundations like Apache or organizations
> like FSF
Well, then let me emphasize what Alan said before: In Europe, the legal
situation is not as clear as you seem to be presuming it.
I am not presuming anything in Europe. What I claim only applies to US
as stated in the links I have given above and all my examples have been
US based organizations.
Esp. in Germany and probably other (European) countries, copyrights in
general are not assignable at all [1], which means they probably are
legally void, a fact which could be legally exploited to fight a license
at court.
Ralf
[1] Germany's constitution explicitly protects copyright on artistic
work. The question, which AFAICT has not been decided at courts yet, is
if "free, independent and uncontracted work on OSS above a certain
amount" qualifies as "free art" and therefore would impose OSS to be
protected by Germany's constitution. - So far, at least many legal
publications share and emphasize this view.
Rahul