Essential Guide to Preserving Freedom of Action for Open Source Developers
summary
Explains how the Developer Certificate of Origin (invented in 2005) plus signed-off-by chains in git create immutable provenance that changes common-law expectations about developer agency, now relied on by hundreds of projects and thousands of companies over ~15 years. Shows DCO wins same legal standing as CLAs, details the agency hack that makes engineers de facto able to grant IP rights, describes a practical career tactic—listing projects on prior‑inventions forms to retain copyright or negotiate joint ownership.
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chapters (15)
- 0:00Start
- 3:51How Do You Hack the Legal System
- 11:22Open Source Licenses
- 11:43Change the Statutes
- 12:08Common Law
- 13:16Expectation of the Parties
- 13:46The Developer Certificate of Origin
- 14:56The Problem
- 15:10Issue of Agency
- 15:39The Law of Agency
- 19:58Owning Your Own Copyright
- 23:21Contributor License Agreement
- 26:16Owning Your Own Copyrights in Open Source
- 30:06Hacks for Copyright Ownership
- 34:30Conclusions
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