2009/4/27 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
2009/4/27 WJhonson@aol.com:
In a message dated 4/27/2009 11:12:44 AM Pacific Daylight Time, saintonge@telus.net writes:
Yes, and, absent any agreement to the contrary, any one of those same authors may grant a free licence.>>
I'm very suspicious of this claim. If I and seven other own a piece of property, I alone cannot sell it to a prospective buyer. The same would hold of copyright. Although each owner has a copyright, a single owner cannot grant away the entire right to a third party.
It also doesn't sound right from the practices for free software - where relicensing is a massive pain in the backside because of the need to get agreement from all contributors. Hence the "or later" language recommended for the GPL - and the GFDL, hence a mere vote on relicensing being possible.
- d.
It's one of the issues that comes up with lower level orphan works. Since people don't normally mention copyrights in their wills after a couple of generations working out who holds what rights can be near impossible.