On Jan 20, 2007, at 7:35 PM, der.hans wrote:
>> It almost feels like a scam that is harnessing the public energy  
>> and input
>> towards personal( or corporate ) profit.  Once the code is GPL it  
>> is public
>> and no person or entity reserves the right to license the code in  
>> any way(
>> at least that is my understanding ).
>
> The GPL is explicitly reserving the right to license the code :),  
> but I
> think that's not what you meant ;-).
>
> If the author has assigned copyright to Sun Sun can do anything it  
> wants
> with the code. I'm pretty certain that's how things are setup for  
> OO.o. I
> know the agreement was sufficiently ugly that I never considered  
> actually
> reading it or submitting code. I can't afford to pay a lawyer  
> enough to
> find out what the agreement says.
>
> If you don't like the setup, that's fine. Fork the project.
>
> You can't just shove stuff into the Linux kernel. You have to get
> permission from the maintainers and they have rules about how they'll
> accept code.
>
> GNU Enterprise ( completely and utterly devoted Free Software )  
> requires
> something similar to what Sun has for OO.o. It's not to allow them to
> release GNUe as proprietary software ( which they might be able to  
> do ),
> rather to make sure they can use submitted code and to make sure  
> they can
> go after someone for copyright infringement.
>
> My project and my repository == my rules. If it's GPL and my rules
> suckath, then the project can be forked or the code slurped into a
> different project.

I think that Hans hit it fairly squarely on the head.  You seem to be  
confusing the license of the code with whom owns the copyright.  The  
truth is the copyright holder can do whatever they want to with the  
code.  Including releasing it under a new license, extending  
additional rights for a fee to anyone they wish, etc.  This is VERY  
important to understand and why good projects work diligently to get  
copyright assignment from contributors.

As technically the only one that can defend a work during a  
"violation of copyright" is the copyright holder.  So say I'm hacking  
on project foo and have contributed half the code.  Then get busy  
with real life (tm) and now someone starts violating the gpl on  
project foo.  It just so happens that its my code that is getting  
"abused".  If you can't hunt me down to stand behind it, you can't do  
anything to stop evil corp (tm) from continuing forward.

The downside of course, is that project foo could turn around and  
relicense the code in a different way that I don't agree with.  All  
said at the end of the day I suggest not submitting code that you  
"care" about to a project that you don't understand or agree to the  
ground rules of. :)

--
Derek

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