[Qgis-psc] Contributor guidelines and code copyright

[Vincent Picavet]

Hi Alex,

> I'm asking because there is an discussion here. Can QGIS
> contributor/developer
> transfer his copyright to another person/company? So this 3rd party
> person/company will become copyright holder on this code parts and will use
> it for their own purposes, e.g. for registration or something else.

This is something which is possible, and actually happens all the time in the 
context of a paid development work.

There are two separate concept to distinguish though. First are moral rights 
("droit d'auteur moral" in France), which include the right of attribution and 
some other related rights. This one is, according to your specific juridiction 
and IP laws, can or cannot be transfered to someone else. In France and other, 
this is a non-transferable right (note that it prevents someone to put his 
work in public domain voluntarily). In other countries it can be transferred. 
The 1928 Berne convention clarifies this concept.

Then you have what is usually called by extension "copyright", in french 
"Droits patrimoniaux", which grant the author a monopolistic right to exploit 
its work economically. Those rights can be transferred to someone else.

For exemple, in France, if a company employs a developer, the latter stays the 
author of the code, but by default (according to "Code du Travail") the 
company is granted the copyrights.
Same, if company A demands (and pays) company B to write some code for her, 
then according to the contract signed, copyrights can be granted to company A.

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.

Disclaimer : I am not a lawyer, please consult your favorite IP lawyer before 
signing anything.

Vincent





> 
> 2014-06-24 15:15 GMT+03:00 Tim Sutton <tim at linfiniti.com>:
> > Hi
> > 
> > 
> > On Tue, Jun 24, 2014 at 7:56 PM, Alexander Bruy
> > <alexander.bruy at gmail.com>
> > 
> > wrote:
> >> Hi all,
> >> 
> >> 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 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).
> >> 
> >> Seems our contributor guidelines miss this important information.
> > 
> > I think we have discussed this in the past but have never made this a
> > requirement - individual contributions are still copyright to their
> > original contributors. There are mare projects that do request transfer
> > of copyright but doing this retroactively is going to be hard (to track
> > down all contributors and keep track of what has been transferred). Also
> > from some discussions I have seen, such copyright transfer makes the
> > project less attractive to contributors as it fosters a certain amount
> > of distrust in the upstream project.
> > 
> > Regards
> > 
> > Tim
> > 
> >> --
> >> Alexander Bruy
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Qgis-psc mailing list
> >> Qgis-psc at lists.osgeo.org
> >> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-psc
> > 
> > --
> > Tim Sutton
> > 
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > ------------------
> > 
> > Visit http://linfiniti.com to find out about:
> >  * QGIS programming services
> >  * GeoDjango web development
> >  * QGIS Training
> >  * FOSS Consulting Services
> > 
> > Skype: timlinux Irc: timlinux on #qgis at freenode.net
> > Tim is a member of the QGIS Project Steering Committee
> > 
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > ------------------