Re: comparison of public licenses?

Karsten,

You have raised a couple of interesting questions, but I am wondering whether your terminology is clear. You referred to "copyright assignment," but did you mean license instead? Or, is it your contention that the GPL transfers (i.e. assigns) all copyright interests to the licensee who thereafter transfer the rights back when they add to the open source project. My own guess is that I doubt that this is happening. There would be a lot of code-forking, if so.

It seems to me that if the GPL grants the right to make a derivative work (and I would say it does this to achieve the copyleft), then code-forking is completely permissible; provisions in the GPL to the contrary may be unenforceable. Nonetheless, a software distributor like Red Hat has other incentives to cooperate with the open source business model. IP is not their biggest concern.

Someone asked about articles on open source licenses, try this one: Robert Gomulkiewicz, "How Copyleft Uses License Rights To Succeed in the Open Source Revolution and the Implications for Article 2B," 36 Houston L. Rev. 179 (1999)

Rod Dixon, J.D., LL.M.
http://www.cyberspaces.org/
rod[_at_]cyberspaces.org Received on Wed Jan 26 2000 - 19:24:26 GMT