Canonical copyright assignment policy 'same as others'
Jan 29, 2010, 20:03 (5 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Sam Varghese)
"Canonical chief executive Mark Shuttleworth has called for an
uniform copyright assignment policy for contributors to free and
open source software projects.
"He told iTWire that while many companies and institutions used
such assignment to include contributions in projects of which they
were the primary copyright owner and contributor, "they all use
divergent contracts, and it would be good to standardise and
harmonise those".
"Shuttleworth was reacting to queries raised in connection with
an article in the Linux Weekly News where editor Jon Corbet had
expressed reservations about the Canonical policy. Corbet mentioned
that he had asked Canonical some queries but received no answers
over the course of a couple of days.
"(It must be noted here that Canonical took less than
three-and-half hours to provide a detailed response to iTWire's
queries; the delay in publishing this article is solely because
this writer was on holiday.)
"Elaborating on his point, Shuttleworth said, "for example,
Intel required copyright assignment for contributions to Clutter
and other projects. Novell to Moblin. Red Hat has a number of
contributors' agreements too. There's a long list of those
agreements; a few of them are poisonous but they are the rare
exception."
Complete Story
Related Stories:
