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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: koffice policies and copyright policy
From:       Inge Wallin <inge () lysator ! liu ! se>
Date:       2010-09-06 14:44:28
Message-ID: 201009061644.29145.inge () lysator ! liu ! se
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On Friday, September 03, 2010 16:28:32 Dr. Robert Marmorstein wrote:

> Because I work in the academic world where correct attribution is very
> important, I'm a little resistant to the idea of giving someone a copyright
> on code that they've hardly contributed to.  If one of my students did
> that and turned it in as a project I would probably give him a failing
> grade and bring him (or her) up on honor charges.  

I think you have it backwards.  We are not discussing if somebody owns a 
copyright on code he didn't contribute to.  We are discussing under which 
circumstances the copyright that was already established on a file disappears.

If you claim copyright on something you haven't contributed to, it's indeed 
bad.  But when the code that you have clearly written is removed, e.g. through 
refactorings or rewrites, does your copyright claims in the file still remain?  
That is not so clear at all.

> I realize that an open
> source is very different from a classroom project, but I think some of the
> same concerns apply.  I'd feel a lot more confident about adopting a
> policy on this if someone with some professional legal experience had
> looked it over first, to catch any glaring errors or loopholes.

Indeed.  And that's why I think this won't get clearly resolved until KDE has 
a clear policy that we can coopt.  And perhaps even then, the problem with 
different jurisdictions will make it impossible to get it right everywhere.  
Until that happens, though, we should try to find out what others have written 
about the matter, and Cyrille found some texts on the Software Freedom Law 
Center.  That's good enough for me in the meanwhile.

	-Inge
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