llvm dev - Sep 2010 - [LLVMdev] clarification to copyright section of developer policy

Hi All,

I updated the copyright section of the developer policy:
http://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#copyright

This change doesn't affect any llvm policies, it just makes the developer
policy reflect reality.

The previous version (archived here:
http://llvm.org/releases/2.7/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#copyright) used to claim
that all copyright was assigned to the university of illinois.  Since LLVM
doesn't have a written copyright assignment process, this is just not true. 
In practice, copyright assignment is really only useful (afaik) for two things:

 1) being able to change the copyright in the future.
 2) having a single entity to down violators of the license.

Since neither of these are really interesting goals for the project, having
distributed copyright is not a problem.  My personal belief is that, for almost
all contributors, distributed copyright is better, because it means that your
code won't be changed to a different license in the future without your
control.

I'm happy to answer any comments or concerns,

-Chris

Am 23.09.2010 19:44, schrieb Chris Lattner:
> In practice, copyright assignment is
> really only useful (afaik) for two things:
>
> 1) being able to change the copyright in the future. 2) having a
> single entity to down violators of the license.
>
> Since neither of these are really interesting goals for the project,
> having distributed copyright is not a problem.
Not currently, but project goals do change over time.

(I don't think the "hunt down violators" aspect is relevant at
all; any
contributor should have authority to pounce on violators. At least 
that's how German Urheberrecht works, AFAIK.)

Regards,
Jo

On Sep 23, 2010, at 1:58 PM, Joachim Durchholz wrote:
> Am 23.09.2010 19:44, schrieb Chris Lattner:
>> In practice, copyright assignment is
>> really only useful (afaik) for two things:
>> 
>> 1) being able to change the copyright in the future. 2) having a
>> single entity to down violators of the license.
>> 
>> Since neither of these are really interesting goals for the project,
>> having distributed copyright is not a problem.
> 
> Not currently, but project goals do change over time.
> 
> (I don't think the "hunt down violators" aspect is relevant
at all; any
> contributor should have authority to pounce on violators. At least 
> that's how German Urheberrecht works, AFAIK.)
I'm guessing that the distributed ownership would give the defense lawyers
plenty of opportunity to spread FUD about whether any single person can actually
claim a significant violation.

Sebastian