[TOS] Textbook authors: Copyright Assignment, please respond

Ross Gardler ross.gardler at oucs.ox.ac.uk
Thu Sep 17 22:29:48 UTC 2009


2009/9/17 Greg DeKoenigsberg <gdk at redhat.com>:

> * This also requires a single copyright holder -- i.e. the party with whom
> the CLA is binding.  Which would require all authors to sign away their
> copyright.

This is incorrect.

There is no need for authors to sign away their copyright, they need
only grant a sufficient rights to release the copyright under the
agreed licence. More information on how CLAs work is at
http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/cla.xml

As a community we already discussed and agreed that individual authors
will retain their copyright, so the CLA will *not* require copyright
assignment, only licence grants.

> Our options:
>
>  + TOS as an org.  We're not there yet, I don't think.
>
>  + FLOSS Manuals as an org.  I don't know that FM exists as a legal
>    entity either, since the copyrights seem to mostly be owned by
>    Adam Hyde.
>
>  + Some company.  I'd like to avoid that.
>
>  + An individual.  I suppose this could be me, or Adam Hyde of FLOSS
>    Manuals.

+ One of the many universities we have represented here

+ Proceed without CLAs and without OSS Watch's direct contribution.
You can still take our content under a CC-BY-SA, it just means we
can't put it up there for you. Since our content requires molding into
a unified textbook the community may decide the effort is not worth
it.

Ross



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