Copyrights (was: Where is FreeBSD going?)

[Rahul Siddharthan]

Narvi wrote:
> > We can all be glad that it hasn't mattered and might never matter that
> > the FreeBSD IP situation is so shabby, I suppose because it sends the
> > message that it's all essentially a Gentlemen's Agreement, with only a
> > few violators who are more-or-less tolerated.
> >
> 
> It is not clear that there is a way - as things stand - to get to a point
> where this wouldnot be the case. In appears very doubtful there is such a
> way unless you can get to get everybody whose code has been ever commited
> to send in a real written on paper copyright transfer, the chances of
> which are essentialy 0, even should you be able to trace down all involved.

Copyright transfer is certainly not required if the code was released
by the original author under a suitable free software licence
(BSD/GPL/LGPL or others that permit FreeBSD to redistribute them).
All that is required is that you retain the author's copyright
statement in the source files.  

You can of course not do this with copyrighted material in general.
It is the free software licence that allows you to do it if you abide
by its conditions.

If the claim is that there is code in the tree whose licensing status
is doubtful, you should point out that code.

As for the "copyright (C) the FreeBSD project" bit: As I understand,
editors/publishers who compile anthologies can claim copyright on the
anthologies (the act of anthologisation itself being a creative
process) even if the individual articles in the anthology are
copyright by their respective authors.  Similarly, free software
distributors like Red Hat can (and do) claim copyright on their
distributions.  According to OpenBSD's website, Theo de Raadt claims
copyright on OpenBSD's CDs and does not permit their copying or
distributing ISO images of those CDS, though of course you can
assemble your own ISO and distribute those.  

The assembling of the FreeBSD system through various contributions is
a creative act and I'm quite sure it's copyright protected, and the
copyright can be claimed by "the FreeBSD project" ie the community of
FreeBSD developers, even if individual components are copyrighted by
others. 

Even the GPL has no problem with that: the GPL explicitly exempts
"mere aggregation" from its virality clause so you needn't get the
permission of every copyright holder of GPL'd work in the tree before
distributing it, as long as it's not linked to GPL-incompatible code.  

The FSF does demand transfer of copyright to them for all
contributions to official GNU software, but this is not because it
would be illegal for them to use these contributions otherwise; it is
because they think they can more successfully challenge GPL violators
if they, as a single entity, hold all the copyrights.

Rahul