Copyright (Was: Re: New panel in trunk)

[Biju Chacko]

Jasper Huijsmans wrote:
> Daichi Kawahata schreef:
> ...
> 
>>Modified in repository, by the way, which should I use for the
>>copyright notification in the initial comments?
>>
>>  a) Copyright (C) 2005 Jasper Huijsmans <jasper at xfce.org>.
>>  b) Copyright (C) 2005 Jasper Huijsmans.
>>  c) Copyright (C) 2002-2005 Jasper Huijsmans.
>>  d) Copyright (C) 2002-2005 Jasper Huijsmans and The Xfce development team.
>>  e) Copyright (C) 2002-2005 The Xfce development team.
>>
> 
> 
> e) is fine with me. In fact, I've been wondering if I should do that for 
> my source files as well.
> 
>    Copyright <year> The Xfce development team
> 
>    Authors:
>      ...
> 
> I have no idea what the legal status of such a line would be though. Can 
> the Xfce development team be official copyright holder?

Not unless it has legal existence as a registered organisation (profit 
or non-profit).

Frankly speaking, it would probably be a good idea if the copyright 
ownership in Xfce is clear and unambiguous.

There are three ways that I can think of:

* Register "Xfce Dev Team" as a corporation or foundation and assign all 
copyrights to it.

* Assign all copyrights to a single person, like Olivier, for example.

* Assign all copyrights to a particular module to the module maintainer. 
When maintainers change, copyright is assigned to the new maintainer.

All patches require an explicit or implicit copyright assignment. This 
would require that either:

a. All patch submissions should be accompanied by a copyright assignment. OR

b. prominent notices on the website and in the source code distribution 
that state that all patches submissions unaccompanied by an assignment 
will be considered assigned and that any submitter who disagrees can ask 
for his submission to be backed out.

In this litigous age, clear ownership is a must for *any* free software 
project.

-- b