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Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 11:04:04 -0400
Subject: Re: Bitkeeper outrage, old and new
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Cc: Brad Hards <bhards@bigpond.net.au>, Robert Love <rml@tech9.net>,
       Ben Collins <bcollins@debian.org>, Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com>,
       Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>,
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To: Xavier Bestel <xavier.bestel@free.fr>
From: Daniel Berlin <dberlin@dberlin.org>
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On Monday, October 21, 2002, at 03:51  AM, Xavier Bestel wrote:

> Le lun 21/10/2002 à 00:51, Brad Hards a écrit :
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> On Mon, 21 Oct 2002 08:47, Daniel Berlin wrote:
>>
>>> 2+ people having copyrights on something only occurs when you have
>>> joint authorship (or rare partial transfers).
>>> In this case, what we have is the a transfer of copyright from you, 
>>> to
>>> the FSF ("my entire right, title, and interest (including all rights
>>> under copyright))"
>>> It's like transferring rights to real property (in most countries, 
>>> you
>>> can view copyright as an object of property in trying to determine 
>>> what
>>> you can do with it)
>>> When rights are transferred to another party, the original author
>>> doesn't get any residual rights unless these are expressly reserved 
>>> as
>>> a "grant back".
>>> You are no longer the owner of the copy right.
>> Which is the whole point of the FSF copyright assignment. They don't 
>> want you
>> to relicense it under some other terms. Under the GPL it doesn't 
>> matter who
>> owns the copyright, so the only point of the copyright assignment is 
>> to
>> reduce _your_ rights.
>
> But in the copyright assignment request, the FSF states:
>
> "   However, upon thirty days` prior written notice, the Foundation
> agrees to grant me non-exclusive rights to use the program as I see
> fit; (and the Foundation shall also own similar non-exclusive rights)."
>
> Doesn't this mean that the author still has copyrights on his work,
> provided he tells the FSF within one month ?

Nope.
It means within 30 days of you giving them notice, they'll give you a 
license to do whatever you want with your stuff in terms of *use*. They 
aren't giving you back *ownership*.
It's not a copyright transfer, it's a license.   It gives you much the 
same rights, but you don't get the legal protection remedies and 
whatnot that are in the copyright statute.
They'd have to reassign copyright back to you to get it.
Copyright transfers must be explicit, and in writing (mumble mumble as 
with all of law, there are a few small exceptions mumble mumble).
So if it doesn't look like a copyright assignment, and you can't tell 
if it is one or not, it's not one.
--Dan