Project Ownership & Project Enforcement: The Rules, They Are A-Changing
summary
Overview of current IP and enforcement shifts: three contribution models are compared—copyright assignment, CLA contributor license agreement, and license-in equals license-out—with FSF/GNU abandoning mandatory assignment as evidence assignment falls out of favor. Recent enforcement cases (McHardy, Hellwig vs VMware, Software Freedom Conservancy v Vizio) test legal theories—bare copyright permission versus contract—and show that disaggregated ownership complicates who can sue, which may push projects toward reciprocal licensing or revisiting contributor terms.
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chapters (9)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:44History of Open Source
- 2:30Software Licenses
- 5:29Contribution Policies
- 13:32FOSS Legal Theory
- 15:37Why this legal theory matters
- 17:23Enforcement trends
- 20:48Final thoughts
- 24:21Questions
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