volunteer copyright assignment / licensing agreement

As it has been requested by Debian contributors, I'd like to know if SPI
offers the possibility, to contributors of affiliated projects, to
transfer copyright (or specific rights) to SPI. If yes: how?

If not: has anyone else here had similar needs in the past? If it is
going to be offered as a possibility, it seems to me that it'd make
sense to do it in an uniform manner throughout all affiliated projects.

The only best practice that come to my mind about this practice is the
Fiduciary Licensing Agreement by KDE
e.V. http://ev.kde.org/rules/fla.php , which is entirely optional, but
felt as an opportunity by contributors that would like to empower
entities like KDE e.V. to act in their stead for license violations and
the like.

Thanks in advance for your help,
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . zack(at)upsilon(dot)cc . . . . o . . . o . o
Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o
Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o .
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »

On 13117 March 1977, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> As it has been requested by Debian contributors, I'd like to know if SPI
> offers the possibility, to contributors of affiliated projects, to
> transfer copyright (or specific rights) to SPI. If yes: how?

Well. Take a look at the footer of a random page on www.debian.org,
packages.debian.org, qa.debian.org and who knows what else, I would say
SPI is already doing that for as long as one can remember...

What we don't have, afaik, is a written agreement from individuals for
that. Just the fact that they, at some point, did the edit for it /
edited pages with that notice. How much that will hold in the end if it
goes to court is a question we might want to check.

> If not: has anyone else here had similar needs in the past? If it is
> going to be offered as a possibility, it seems to me that it'd make
> sense to do it in an uniform manner throughout all affiliated projects.

I think it would be nice to have that stuff specified more formally and
to offer it. I (currently) don't see why SPI shouldn't, just that we
need to check what would be done in case the project wants to leave SPI
and go elsewhere. (IE. the assignment would either stay with us, or
provide us with the right to get that on to suitable others too).

--
bye, Joerg
<Fubak> /msg NickServ IDENTIFY arschloch
<codebreaker> /msg nickserv ghost Fubak arschloch
-!- Fubak has quit [Nick collision from services.]

Btw, if you work as a consultant or somehow else for a company, then
people often don't realize that donating IPR to a foundation like SPI
can be accounted for as a business expense, which means having to pay
less tax. This is just the same as you would do when donating cash, or
furniture, or old computers.

You would have to somehow find out an objective valuation for the
copyright that you transfer, the details for doing this are beyond my
knowledge.

If you were planning to assign copyrights to SPI anyway, you might as
well benefit from it too.

henrik

On Sat, Feb 9, 2013 at 7:45 PM, Stefano Zacchiroli <leader(at)debian(dot)org> wrote:
> As it has been requested by Debian contributors, I'd like to know if SPI
> offers the possibility, to contributors of affiliated projects, to
> transfer copyright (or specific rights) to SPI. If yes: how?
>
> If not: has anyone else here had similar needs in the past? If it is
> going to be offered as a possibility, it seems to me that it'd make
> sense to do it in an uniform manner throughout all affiliated projects.
>
> The only best practice that come to my mind about this practice is the
> Fiduciary Licensing Agreement by KDE
> e.V. http://ev.kde.org/rules/fla.php , which is entirely optional, but
> felt as an opportunity by contributors that would like to empower
> entities like KDE e.V. to act in their stead for license violations and
> the like.
>
> Thanks in advance for your help,
> Cheers.
> --
> Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . zack(at)upsilon(dot)cc . . . . o . . . o . o
> Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o
> Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o .
> « the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »
>
> _______________________________________________
> Spi-general mailing list
> Spi-general(at)lists(dot)spi-inc(dot)org
> http://lists.spi-inc.org/listinfo/spi-general
>

--
henrik(dot)ingo(at)avoinelama(dot)fi
+358-40-8211286 skype: henrik.ingo irc: hingo
www.openlife.cc

My LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=9522559

On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 10:26:53AM +0100, Joerg Jaspert wrote:
> On 13117 March 1977, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> > As it has been requested by Debian contributors, I'd like to know if SPI
> > offers the possibility, to contributors of affiliated projects, to
> > transfer copyright (or specific rights) to SPI. If yes: how?
>
> Well. Take a look at the footer of a random page on www.debian.org,
> packages.debian.org, qa.debian.org and who knows what else, I would say
> SPI is already doing that for as long as one can remember...

Right. So the question is indeed what value there is in "random"
contributors of affiliated projects simply using SPI in copyright
notices. I say "random" here because in the example you mention of the
www.debian.org website, there are several contributors which are not
even affiliated with Debian, they just happen to have an account on
alioth. I'm not sure if they qualify as (indirect) SPI members and, as a
consequence, I'm not sure what validity there is in a simple copyright
notice. (Especially considering that the real copyright ownership is
independent from what the copyright notice says.)

Some clarifications from SPI legal counselors on this would be
appreciated.

FWIW, the case of actual code contributions is a bit more worrisome for
me than the website case. Arguably, I see as much more probable that one
will want to enforce copyright for code contributions, for instance in
GPL violation cases, than for, say, website translation contributions.

So while I somehow could understand people turning a blind eye on lax
copyright assignments policies up to know, having only the website as a
use case, I'd be much more reluctant in doing the same for significant
code contributions.

Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . zack(at)upsilon(dot)cc . . . . o . . . o . o
Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o
Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o .
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »

Stefano Zacchiroli <leader(at)debian(dot)org> writes:

> As it has been requested by Debian contributors, I'd like to know if SPI
> offers the possibility, to contributors of affiliated projects, to
> transfer copyright (or specific rights) to SPI. If yes: how?

The answer should be yes, but I don't recall any specific incidents in
which SPI formally accepted transfer of copyright from an individual.
As a result, I think we would need to speak to our SFLC friends about
exactly what form such a contribution agreement should take and what
record keeping we need to engage in.

Frankly, I've never been a fan of copyright assignment. While I'm sure
there are cases in which it makes sense for someone to want to assign
their copyrights to SPI, I would want to have a per-incident discussion
with the individual(s) in question before we blindly start accepting
such assignments, to be sure the best interests of the Free Software
community are actually being served by such assignment.

Bdale

In our license headers we identify SPI in the copyright but together
with those that contributing code. So there is no one copyright holder
but a collection. We use WebKit in our project and we see this similar
scenario where multiple folks or company that contribute each have a
copyright under the license agreed for the project. For example, we do
this and when contributors make changes, their copyright is added to
the files add or modify.

* Copyright (c) 2012 Software in the Public Interest Inc (SPI)
* Copyright (c) 2012 David Pratt
* Copyright (c) 2012 Mital Vora
*
* Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
* you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
* You may obtain a copy of the License at
*
* http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
*
* Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
* distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
* WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
* See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
* limitations under the License.

Regards,
David

On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 1:16 PM, Bdale Garbee <bdale(at)gag(dot)com> wrote:
> Stefano Zacchiroli <leader(at)debian(dot)org> writes:
>
>> As it has been requested by Debian contributors, I'd like to know if SPI
>> offers the possibility, to contributors of affiliated projects, to
>> transfer copyright (or specific rights) to SPI. If yes: how?
>
> The answer should be yes, but I don't recall any specific incidents in
> which SPI formally accepted transfer of copyright from an individual.
> As a result, I think we would need to speak to our SFLC friends about
> exactly what form such a contribution agreement should take and what
> record keeping we need to engage in.
>
> Frankly, I've never been a fan of copyright assignment. While I'm sure
> there are cases in which it makes sense for someone to want to assign
> their copyrights to SPI, I would want to have a per-incident discussion
> with the individual(s) in question before we blindly start accepting
> such assignments, to be sure the best interests of the Free Software
> community are actually being served by such assignment.
>
> Bdale
>
> _______________________________________________
> Spi-general mailing list
> Spi-general(at)lists(dot)spi-inc(dot)org
> http://lists.spi-inc.org/listinfo/spi-general
>

Hi David,

You probably shouldn't list SPI as copyright holder when nobody's assigned
copyright to SPI. The mere fact of being an associated project of SPI doesn't
give SPI copyright, though it does make SPI more willing to consider voluntary
copyright assignment if specifically requested. In the case of WebKit, the
companies who show up in the copyright file usually hold copyright in
connection with their employees contributing as part of their jobs, or
sometimes based on employment legalese.

I agree with Bdale that copyright assignment to SPI is usually not the best
solution, but exceptions can exist. None happen implicitly, though.

- Jimmy Kaplowitz
jimmy(at)spi-inc(dot)org

On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 03:12:25PM -0400, David Pratt wrote:
> In our license headers we identify SPI in the copyright but together
> with those that contributing code. So there is no one copyright holder
> but a collection. We use WebKit in our project and we see this similar
> scenario where multiple folks or company that contribute each have a
> copyright under the license agreed for the project. For example, we do
> this and when contributors make changes, their copyright is added to
> the files add or modify.
>
> * Copyright (c) 2012 Software in the Public Interest Inc (SPI)
> * Copyright (c) 2012 David Pratt
> * Copyright (c) 2012 Mital Vora
> *
> * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
> * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
> * You may obtain a copy of the License at
> *
> * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
> *
> * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
> * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
> * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
> * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
> * limitations under the License.
>
> Regards,
> David
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 1:16 PM, Bdale Garbee <bdale(at)gag(dot)com> wrote:
> > Stefano Zacchiroli <leader(at)debian(dot)org> writes:
> >
> >> As it has been requested by Debian contributors, I'd like to know if SPI
> >> offers the possibility, to contributors of affiliated projects, to
> >> transfer copyright (or specific rights) to SPI. If yes: how?
> >
> > The answer should be yes, but I don't recall any specific incidents in
> > which SPI formally accepted transfer of copyright from an individual.
> > As a result, I think we would need to speak to our SFLC friends about
> > exactly what form such a contribution agreement should take and what
> > record keeping we need to engage in.
> >
> > Frankly, I've never been a fan of copyright assignment. While I'm sure
> > there are cases in which it makes sense for someone to want to assign
> > their copyrights to SPI, I would want to have a per-incident discussion
> > with the individual(s) in question before we blindly start accepting
> > such assignments, to be sure the best interests of the Free Software
> > community are actually being served by such assignment.
> >
> > Bdale
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Spi-general mailing list
> > Spi-general(at)lists(dot)spi-inc(dot)org
> > http://lists.spi-inc.org/listinfo/spi-general
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Spi-general mailing list
> Spi-general(at)lists(dot)spi-inc(dot)org
> http://lists.spi-inc.org/listinfo/spi-general

On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 10:16:04AM -0700, Bdale Garbee wrote:
> The answer should be yes, but I don't recall any specific incidents in
> which SPI formally accepted transfer of copyright from an individual.
> As a result, I think we would need to speak to our SFLC friends about
> exactly what form such a contribution agreement should take and what
> record keeping we need to engage in.

OK, thanks for clarifying this. If someone of the SPI board could look
into this I would appreciate. I speculate sooner or later it will come
handy --- either for Debian or for other affiliated projects.

> Frankly, I've never been a fan of copyright assignment. While I'm sure
> there are cases in which it makes sense for someone to want to assign
> their copyrights to SPI, I would want to have a per-incident discussion
> with the individual(s) in question before we blindly start accepting
> such assignments, to be sure the best interests of the Free Software
> community are actually being served by such assignment.

I'm myself radically against copyright assignments to for-profit
organizations. But I also think that assignments to entities that
satisfy two requirements---(a) being non-profits, and (b) having clear
governance rules---are an entirely different beasts.

In any case, and to be frank, Debian currently doesn't really *need*
this. I've forwarded a desire of a Debian contributor, who could
probably live without this. Still, I do sympathize with contributors
that want to make themselves replaceable before copyright law, and want
to empower some trusted entities to act in their stead if their
copyright will ever need to be used (e.g. for license enforcement).

I speculate that SPI projects who are more development intense than
Debian (i.e. that develop a lot, rather than integrate) might need this
more than Debian does. SPI might probably benefit from anticipating this
kind of needs. If it ever happens, Debian will be happy to benefit form
it too.

Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . zack(at)upsilon(dot)cc . . . . o . . . o . o
Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o
Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o .
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »

Stefano Zacchiroli <leader(at)debian(dot)org> writes:

> I speculate that SPI projects who are more development intense than
> Debian (i.e. that develop a lot, rather than integrate) might need this
> more than Debian does. SPI might probably benefit from anticipating this
> kind of needs. If it ever happens, Debian will be happy to benefit form
> it too.

You make excellent points. Thanks!

Bdale

Jimmy Kaplowitz writes ("Re: volunteer copyright assignment / licensing agreement"):
> You probably shouldn't list SPI as copyright holder when nobody's assigned
> copyright to SPI.

I think if the original author or copyright holder writes a copyright
notice saying that SPI is the copyright holder, then that is a legally
effective copyright assignment. At least in the UK[1].

[1] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/part/I/chapter/V

Ian.

Joerg Jaspert writes ("Re: volunteer copyright assignment / licensing agreement"):
> I think it would be nice to have that stuff specified more formally and
> to offer it. I (currently) don't see why SPI shouldn't, just that we
> need to check what would be done in case the project wants to leave SPI
> and go elsewhere. (IE. the assignment would either stay with us, or
> provide us with the right to get that on to suitable others too).

Isn't this sufficiently covered by the SPI Position and Promises about
Intellectual Property, SPI Board resolution 1998-11-16.iwj.2 ?

Let me quote s3:

3. Software Copyright

SPI does not encourage software authors to assign copyright in their
work to SPI. It is usually in everyone's best interests for the
original author to retain their copyright, and to release it under a
good free software licence such as the GNU General Public License
(preferably stating 'version 2 or, at your option, any later
version').

Nevertheless, in some circumstances authors may wish to assign
software copyright to SPI. In this case SPI will release the software
under the GNU General Public License unless the nature of software
requires a less restrictive licence. In any case SPI will release such
software under a licence compatible with the GNU GPL.

If software copyright assigned to SPI is shared with other people or
organisations, and the licences do not permit release under the GNU
GPL then SPI will do its best to improve the situation, by releasing
the software under as good a licence as possible and encouraging other
joint copyright holders to improve their licences.

Ian.

On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 02:11:57PM +0000, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Jimmy Kaplowitz writes ("Re: volunteer copyright assignment / licensing agreement"):
> > You probably shouldn't list SPI as copyright holder when nobody's assigned
> > copyright to SPI.
>
> I think if the original author or copyright holder writes a copyright
> notice saying that SPI is the copyright holder, then that is a legally
> effective copyright assignment. At least in the UK[1].

In the US, "A transfer of copyright ownership, other than by operation of law,
is not valid unless an instrument of conveyance, or a note or memorandum of the
transfer, is in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed or such
owner's duly authorized agent." http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap2.html

- Jimmy Kaplowitz
jimmy(at)spi-inc(dot)org

Jimmy Kaplowitz writes ("Re: volunteer copyright assignment / licensing agreement"):
> On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 02:11:57PM +0000, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > I think if the original author or copyright holder writes a copyright
> > notice saying that SPI is the copyright holder, then that is a legally
> > effective copyright assignment. At least in the UK[1].
>
> In the US, "A transfer of copyright ownership, other than by
> operation of law, is not valid unless an instrument of conveyance,
> or a note or memorandum of the transfer, is in writing and signed by
> the owner of the rights conveyed or such owner's duly authorized
> agent." http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap2.html

That's similar to the wording in the UK CDPA to which I gave a link.
So the author would have to write their name, but a statement along
these lines
Copyright (C)2013 Software in the Public Interest Inc
- Alice Smith 2013.
might suffice. Something clearer would clearly be desirable, along
the lines of
Copyright (C)2013 Software in the Public Interest Inc (SPI)

I hereby transfer my copyright in this work to Software
in the Public Intest Inc, - Alice Smith 19 Feb 2013.

My main point was that there is no requirement for formalities on the
part of the new copyright holder to "accept" the transfer. So SPI
can hold these copyrights whether we like it or not.

Ian.