Re: Bitkeeper outrage, old and new

Daniel Berlin
2002-10-20T22:41:19Z

On Sunday, October 20, 2002, at 05:42 PM, Xavier Bestel wrote:

> Le dim 20/10/2002 à 21:15, Robert Love a écrit :
>> On Sun, 2002-10-20 at 13:34, Ben Collins wrote:
>>
>>> I disagree. I don't see anything in the copyright assignment (and I
>>> have
>>> signed a few for the FSF) that says I don't retain original copyright
>>> for my work.
>>
>> That is only because they relicense the work back to you (and its
>> GPLed
>> you have a lot of freedom with it anyhow).
>>
>> When you sign over your copyright, you relinquish it. The FSF now has
>> the copyright on your work and you do not.
>
> You're plain wrong.
>
> You both have the copyright on your work.

No, you don't.
2+ people having copyrights on something only occurs when you have
joint authorship (or rare partial transfers).
In this case, what we have is the a transfer of copyright from you, to
the FSF ("my entire right, title, and interest (including all rights
under copyright))"
It's like transferring rights to real property (in most countries, you
can view copyright as an object of property in trying to determine what
you can do with it)
When rights are transferred to another party, the original author
doesn't get any residual rights unless these are expressly reserved as
a "grant back".
You are no longer the owner of the copy right.

--Dan