Handling copyright change gracefully

[Gervase Markham]

Matthew P. Barnson wrote:
> By my verifiable digital signature attached to this message, I assign
> copyright of "The Bugzilla Guide" to "The Bugzilla Team".  

Matthew,

There are, unfortunately, a few problems with what you are trying to do. 
Don't get me wrong - I think it's great. But legally it doesn't quite work.

First of all, "The Bugzilla Team" is not a legal entity, even if you 
define what you mean by it, and so can't hold copyrights. You can 
transfer any copyrights you hold to an organisation (such as the Mozilla 
Foundation) or a person (such as Dave.)

> The main reason for this change is that 2.17's assignment of copyright
> "to the various contributors" is not a legal standing any different than
> public domain, and hopelessly muddled and useless.  

It may indeed be "totally muddled and useless", although the code for 
most free software projects is copyrighted this way, including Mozilla 
and Bugzilla.

> Through 2.16 and the
> early 2.17 development cycle, the copyright was in my name, and
> continuing submissions also came under that copyright (since
> modification of copyright was specifically precluded by the terms of
> the license).  

I'm afraid that simply isn't true, legally. Merely making a contribution 
to a document in which you own some of the copyright does not assign the 
copyright in the contribution to you. As SCO is finding out, copyright 
assignment has to be done by a specific legal contract or document.

The current Bugzilla Guide has multiple copyright owners. If one wishes 
to copy it in a way not in accordance with its current licence, one has 
to either get permission from all of them, or remove the sections 
written by those from whom you do not have permission.

This is why free software licences were invented :-)

You do, of course, retain the copyright in all sections of the document 
which you wrote. Assigning that to the Foundation or to Dave would be a 
great first step in relicensing it, for example under a DFSG-free licence.

Gerv