Management of the Official FunnelWeb

FunnelWebmanagementFunnelWebofficial

I intend to maintain an official copy of FunnelWeb and release it under GNU license from time to time so that everyone can use it. Unfortunately its going to be a little messy.

For a variety of reasons, I want to maintain total control over ımy copy of the official version of FunnelWeb. Some of the reasons are:

The trouble is that (in my understanding of copyright law), once a copy of FunnelWeb has been released under GNU license, then it and any works derived from it fall under GNU license too. This means that if you modify a GNU release of FunnelWeb and send me your modifications, and I incorporate them into my version, then I no longer own copyright on the version I modified. Basically, if GNU touches a work, then that copy is gone forever.

My solution to the problem is to keep a copy of FunnelWeb that is GNU-clean and only make modifications to it that are GNU-clean. So long as my official copy is GNU clean, any modifications that I make myself will be GNU clean. The problem comes when someone else modifies the GNU version and then wants me to incorporate the modifications into my official version. As I understand the law, by default, the programmer owns the modifications (because he made them), but the result of making the modifications falls under GNU license. What I propose is that those who want their modifications included in the official copy of FunnelWeb sign an agreement transferring copyright of the modifications over to me on condition that the result be released under GNU license within a certain time period. demonstrates the process.

\begin{figure}
\begin{verbatim}
+---------->----------+--------------<----...
...nelWeb be signed off by the people who make the
modifications.
}
\end{figure}

There are two main disadvantages to this scheme:

  1. Getting each person who contributes modifications to FunnelWeb to sign and send a piece of paper signing away copyright will be tedious.

  2. Programmers may be reluctant to sign away copyright on modifications because the result could be used by me for commercial purposes by me at a later date (Note: But it must be released under GNU as well).

These disadvantages are regrettable consequences of my decision to retain total control over the official version of FunnelWeb.

The upshot of all this is that:

As a separate point from the legal issues, I am likely to turn out to be pretty picky about what modifications I will incorporate into the official copy. Whether a modification will be accepted will depend, amongst other things, on the following criteria.

It is my goal to guard the integrity of the design and code of the official version of FunnelWeb and so I will probably be rather fussy about what I regard as a worthwhile modification. I do not wish to lose control of the code, either technically or legally.