[TOS] Textbook authors: Copyright Assignment, please respond

Ross Gardler ross.gardler at googlemail.com
Fri Sep 18 08:18:03 UTC 2009


Thanks Frank,

A very nice summary of the issues I am trying to address.

Sent from my mobile device.

On 18 Sep 2009, at 04:44, Frank Hecker <hecker at mozillafoundation.org>  
wrote:

> On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 1:40 AM, Chris Tyler <chris at tylers.info>  
> wrote:
>> If every author grants CC-BY-SA, why do we need a CLA?
>
> I can see at least two reasons why a CLA might be useful, at least in
> certain cases. (As Ross said, we'll assume a CLA that is not a full
> copyright assignment.) First, a CLA can memorialize the fact that an
> organization (e.g., OSS Watch) actually has in fact formally granted
> rights to use its materials; this allows employees of that
> organization to freely contribute material without the need to seek
> further management authorization on a case-by-case basis.
>
> Second, assuming the contributing organization is willing to do this,
> a CLA can provide a grant of license rights so broad that it permits
> the material to be redistributed under a variety of different licenses
> as needed. For example, suppose an organization contributed material
> under a broad license grant, and the material was incorporated into a
> work distributed under CC-BY-SA. Suppose at a later time it because
> advantageous to reuse some of the work in a new work (or a new version
> of the older work) distributed under CC-BY or BY-NC-SA. If the
> material in the work were contributed under a broad enough CLA, it
> would not be necessary to go back to the original organization for
> permission to relicense.
>
> Frank
>
> -- 
> Frank Hecker
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