[sword-devel] Question about Public Domain

[Matthew Talbert]

> That doesn't mean it is the sole property of CrossWire, but it does mean that copyright is jointly held between CrossWire and the front end author(s). >Disagree? Ask licensing at fsf.org.

Did you really mean to say copyright here? It is my understanding,
reinforced by http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.html#AssignCopyright,
that the authors of any code, whether patches to the engine, front-end
code, or whatever, automatically are granted copyright of that code.
As such, unless these authors explicitly grant CrossWire copyright,
CrossWire does not even hold the copyright to changes made to the
engine, much less the front-ends. This is why many open-source
projects collect signed paper copyright statements either assigning
copyright to the project, or allowing joint ownership. For just one
example of this, and the reasons behind it, see
http://www.djangoproject.com/foundation/cla/faq/

Matthew