FDL again, was: My concerns about GPLv3 process

Harald Welte laforge at gnumonks.org
Tue Feb 14 09:29:58 UTC 2006


On Mon, Feb 13, 2006 at 03:17:15AM +0100, Frank Heckenbach wrote:
> - E. Vil claims that as not all of the copyright holders of the work
>   he obtained are suing, they cannot sue at all.

This is a myth, and probably stems from US copyright.

At least .de copyright distinguishes between 'joint authorship'
(Miturheberschaft) and 'modifiying authorship' (Bearbeiterurheberrecht).

Only in the case of joint authorship all copyright holders need to take
action.

So if I write a piece of code, put it on the web, and somebody else
picks it up, modifies it, again releases it, and that cycle continues,
you always have 'modifying authorship'.  The original copyright holder
has the original copyright, and each and everybody who did moidfications
and released modified versions has that 'Bearbeiterurheberrecht'.

Even one of the 'modifiers' alone could enforce his copyright.

-- 
- Harald Welte <laforge at gnumonks.org>          	        http://gnumonks.org/
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