[Qgis-psc] Contributor guidelines and code copyright

[Vincent Picavet]

Hello,

Some more clarification below.

> thanks for your reply.
> 
> 2014-06-24 17:24 GMT+03:00 Vincent Picavet <vincent.ml at oslandia.com>:
> > Hence, someone can write some code for QGIS, stay the author of the code,
> > but for one part makes this code available in QGIS for use as GPLv2, and
> > for another part makes this same code available for someone else as
> > another licence.
> > This is also the basics for the Dual-Licencing business model.
> > 
> > These concepts may vary according to local laws, but the global rules are
> > these ones.
> 
> Situation is a bit different. Developer will stay the author of the
> code in any case.
> Company wants to get copyright on the code, written by developer some time
> ago on volunteer basis (no paid work). So this company will be a
> copyright holder
> on the part of QGIS code. No dual-licensing, no another market place.

This copyright transfer because of work made for a company, and dual-licencing 
was just an illustration of the fact that copyright can be transfered.
Please note that most of my statements are valid for European or Anglo-saxon 
kind of IP laws. I have no idea of the way it works in Russia for exemple (Not 
sure they signed the 1928 Bern convention e.g.)

> As I understand from this thread individual contributions are still
> copyright to their original contributors. So developer can freely assign his
> copyright to any other person.

Yes, right. The author stays author and will be credited as such, but all 
other rights can be assigned to someone else.

> What about license headers in this case? Whether we need to update them and
> replace old copyright holder with new one? What if file was created by
> one dev (and his copyright is in header and will be replaced) and updated
> also by other devs?

This only concerns the original work of the author. If this has been modified, 
then you have two options :
- find back the original version, which the author is free to relicence and 
transfer copyrights
- ask any other author who modified the file since then if they agree to the 
same transfer than the initial author

According to the amount of modifications and the moment it was created, this 
can be a real mess. If you want some great history of relicencing, see KDE or 
OSM...

> Seems this is very complex issue, so I don't expect clear answers but
> some thought is welcome.

Hope this helps. Again, same disclaimer, if you want to minimize risk, get a 
(good) IP lawyer. It is a rare thing, but there are some.

Vincent