Re: Bye - Bye , open source derivative works litigation

[chrisv]

Hyman Rosen wrote:

>On 2/10/2010 3:50 PM, Alexander Terekhov wrote:
>
>> The idea is that by doing a few modifying and copyrightable changes into
>> a "single program" in response to the GPL offer one becomes a joint
>> copyright owner of the entire work "as a whole" and can rightfully
>> license that entire work (with 'as a whole' as 'defined' and intended by
>> the GPL) in disrespect of the GPL.

Good gravy, what a ludicrous claim.  You are a fscking idiot.

>No, that's completely wrong: <http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/ownership.html>
>     A joint work is defined by the Copyright Act as:
>     a work prepared by two or more authors with the
>     intention that their contributions be merged into
>     inseparable or interdependent parts of a unitary whole.
>
>A second author cannot hijack someone else's work to become a
>joint author - joint authorship has to be consented to by every
>author of the work, including the first. Rather, the first
>author has authorized the preparation of derivative works only
>under the GPL, and any secondary author who makes changes and
>copies and distributes the resulting work other than under the
>GPL is simply infringing copyright.