5. 2. 4  Legality and contributions

In a project based on free software with participation from the user community, the legal management of the contributions of each member involved is particularly important.

This management is crucial both for the project founders and for the members of the community, as it establishes the features of the authorship and ownership of the rights to the resulting code. Its relevance is also strongly influenced by the implications that the combination of codes from different authors could have on a single product.

To develop these concepts, we will refer to section 2.4 "Authors and holders of rights" of the teaching materials for the subject Legal aspects and the features of exploitation of free software.

Recommended website

M. Bain et al.(2007). Aspectos legales y de explotación del software libre. Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

(http://ocw.uoc.edu/informatica-tecnologia-i-multimedia/aspectes-legals-i-dexplotacio/materials/).

The author

The author of a work is the natural or legal entity that creates the work, so authorship of the original creation is irrevocably assigned to this person.

With works by several individuals, there are a number of possible situations:

In free software, authorship depends largely on the above considerations, taking into account that the transfer of ownership can sometimes be useful and practical.

Moreover, the conditions under which derivative works are created (pre-existing content) may vary materially because of both the author and the work itself. In all events, free licences must specify the conditions of the derivation and redistribution of the works.

The original owner and the derivative owner

The original owner of the work is always the author. However, some rights over the work may be transferred to other individuals or entities.

In this case, the recipient of the transfer of part of the rights to a work becomes the derivative holder thereof. Note that only the holder of a particular right may licence that right.

Identifying the holder

In order to exercise the above rights, we must be able to identify the author of each work. This can be difficult in free software because the contributors to the project may be many and varied.

To solve these problems, projects based on free software keep lists of the authors who have contributed to them. Sometimes, these projects may require the transfer of all or part of the rights before the contribution can be accepted.