FDL again, was: My concerns about GPLv3 process

[Frank Heckenbach]

Harald Welte wrote:

> 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.

(A myth I was trying to disprove with my absurd scenario, BTW.)

> 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.

Thanks for this info. I wasn't aware of this difference, and it's
always good to learn new things (a welcome change in a thread like
this ;-).

So IIUIC, copyright assignments would make the difference between
one "joint authorship" (with assignments) and (single or joint)
authorship for the original author(s) plus "modifying authorship"
for the new contributor(s) (without assignments), but it wouldn't
change the fact that each of the authors can take action on his own,
right?

Frank

-- 
Frank Heckenbach, frank at g-n-u.de
http://fjf.gnu.de/
GnuPG and PGP keys: http://fjf.gnu.de/plan (7977168E) ams at gnu.org,