I’m thinking about open sourcing a project of mine. I’d accept contributions under a CLA that grants me a copyright license (I’ll explain what I mean at the end of this question). — Now, if someone submits a contribution, is it then okay that I write Copyright (c) 2013 My-Name at the top of each file? And mention any contributors in a separate document only, and refer people to the Git commit log and to GitHub statistics if they want details on individual contributors?
I think this should be fine with Copyright (c) My-Name, since I’ve been granted a copyright license?
If it’s not okay, then I suppose the copyright-info-preamble of each source code file would have to include the name of all contributors to that file? Which doesn’t seem practical (if there are very many contributors).
Here I’ll try to explain what I mean with a “a CLA that grants me a copyright license”. This is an edited excerpt from a CLA by Google:
.2. […] You [that is, the contributor] hereby grant to [My-Name, that is, me] and to recipients of software
distributed by [My-Name] a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive,
no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce,
prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform,
sublicense, and distribute Your Contributions and such derivative
works.
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No, you may not.
“Copyright (C) (year) (name): All Rights Reserved” is a copyright notice. A copyright notice states unequivocally that YOU own the work in question, and people desiring to use the work must deal with you. Note that the phrasing is High Magic: it must be phrased precisely this way.
Google’s Contributor License Agreement (CLA) means that the person who owns the work in question has granted Google a license to use it, in accordance with the terms of the license. It does not transfer ownership of the work. The owner retains his rights as owner, unless he specifically gives them up (translation: SELLS them, in most cases). This specifically includes the right to license the work to other people, regardless of how Google might feel about those other people.
Affixing a copyright notice to a work for which you have been assigned a license, but have not actually acquired ownership, is misrepresentation.
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