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.>>
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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.
Will Johnson
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On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 2:36 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
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.
http://depts.washington.edu/uwcopy/Creating_Copyright/Ownership_Factors/Join...
To "sell it to a prospective buyer" would be equivalent to the grant of an exclusive license. To "grant an easement on the property" would be closer to the grant of a nonexclusive license. However, the analogy fails to some extent, because it's not physically possible for multiple people to enjoy the entirety of physical property simultaneously in the same way that this is possible for intellectual property.
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.
On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 2:47 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
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 al
l contributors. Hence the "or later" language recommended for the GPL - and the GFDL, hence a mere vote on relicensing being possible.
Free licenses are generally written from the point of view that modifications to works constitute derivative works, and not works of joint authorship. Either is certainly possible. The key legal question is whether the authors intended to collaborate on a single work (Lennon/McCartney), or if one author created a work which was then modified by another author (a movie created from a screenplay).
It's by no means clear which better fits what happens on Wikipedia. I could see things going either way, but considering the use of the GFDL I'd lean toward believing that the *intent* of most authors was for each subsequent edition to be a derivative work, and not a work of joint authorship. And that's what matters, the intent of the authors (unfortunately, some authors probably intended different from other authors).
Anthony wrote:
Free licenses are generally written from the point of view that modifications to works constitute derivative works, and not works of joint authorship. Either is certainly possible. The key legal question is whether the authors intended to collaborate on a single work (Lennon/McCartney), or if one author created a work which was then modified by another author (a movie created from a screenplay).
It's by no means clear which better fits what happens on Wikipedia. I could see things going either way, but considering the use of the GFDL I'd lean toward believing that the *intent* of most authors was for each subsequent edition to be a derivative work, and not a work of joint authorship. And that's what matters, the intent of the authors (unfortunately, some authors probably intended different from other authors).
Purely on the question of what extra-wiki artistic analogue would be most apposite to the current state of affairs, might I propose:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_of_the_Rising_Sun
Wikipedia is very much jamming on each others contributions, with participants being variously incensed or exhilarated by others appropriating, re-using, re-invigorating old content. Personally I am glad that very few of my early contributions have remained in any form at all as live content. What supplanted them has been much better.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
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.
Free software is usually a series of derivative works rather than a work of joint authorship. It doesn't make much sense, but that's how I understand it to work. (IANAL and when the law is as nonsensical as this, I don't intend to become one!)
On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 3:00 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
Free software is usually a series of derivative works rather than a work of joint authorship. It doesn't make much sense, but that's how I understand it to work. (IANAL and when the law is as nonsensical as this, I don't intend to become one!)
In this case I think RMS/Eben Moglen are as much to blame as the law (they're the ones that invented the copyleft, aren't they?). Treating a collaboration of 100 authors as 99 derivative works gives everyone a headache. Traditional works that have this many authors generally get around the problem by the formation of a single entity to own the copyright (usually as a work for hire).
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.