[Qgis-psc] Contributor guidelines and code copyright

[Vincent Picavet]

Hello,

> I have one small question regarding our contributor guidelines.
> 
> Am I right that QGIS project is an owner of all code contributed to it by
> authors and contributors? So every person that accepted contributor
> guidelines and/or submitted patch also transfer/assign all rights on this
> code to QGIS project.

As far as I know this is not currently the case.
Please also note that according to your specific IP laws, authorship may or may 
not be transferable, whereas copyrights are.

For QGIS, requirements concern code compatibility with the licence, and a 
patent-free clause :
https://hub.qgis.org/wiki/17/Contributor_Guidelines
https://hub.qgis.org/wiki/quantum-gis/Social_Contract

> As I understand, when copyright is assigned to the QGIS project, the
> project can act to stop GPL violations about the QGIS. Otherwise, legal
> actions are up to the code author(s).

I am not 100% sure it can be considered a general truth, but there have been 
some cases where a end-user, not author of any code, has sued a company for 
GPL violation, and won :
http://fsffrance.org/news/article2009-09-22.en.html

Quoting the FSF :
"But what makes this ruling unique is the fact that the suit was filed by a 
user of the software, instead of a copyright holder. It's a commonly held 
belief that only the copyright holder of a work can enforce the license's 
terms - but that's not true in France. People who received software under the 
GNU GPL can also request compliance, since the license grants them rights from 
the authors."

Vincent