Copyright uses and misuses in free software

The practice of copyright assignment applied to free software projects. [15aug10]

The issues around copyright assignment and free software have always been a controversial topic and have played a major part in many forks and schisms in free software projects. Copyright assignment can unify a project under common ownership, or it can be misused to impose control. Richard Hillesley looks at the uses and misuses of copyright assignment as it is applied to free software projects.

Copyright denotes ownership of code, it is regarded as property and as such it can be bought, sold or assigned. This applies to all copyrighted material, and is a weakness in all free software licensing, which is why the Free Software Foundation has always recommended that the ownership of GPL code be assigned to the FSF, which itself has caused ructions among some developers in the past, notably between the developers of Xemacs and GNU Emacs.

The GPL, or any other software licence, depends upon the framework of copyright law. Copyleft is a hack on copyright law that puts the rights and responsibilities back into the hands of the user.

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