Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] Owning your own copyrights in Linux

[Jiri Kosina <jikos@kernel.org>]

On Mon, 29 Aug 2016, Steven Rostedt wrote:

> Personally, I have a small amount of copyrights in the kernel that were 
> done while I was self employed. But a lot more belong to my current 
> employer. I have mixed feelings about trying to own those. One, I trust 
> my current employer with those copyrights, and two, they paid me to do 
> that code. It was never done "on my own time". I don't feel right trying 
> to claim copyright for code I was paid for, even if it was all my idea 
> to create.
> 
> But that may not be the case in the future, and I would like to know my 
> options.

Just for the sake of completness, the situation is quite dramatically 
different in US (where the jurisdiction system is based on common law, 
which means that employer indeed owns the copyright in work created by 
employees), whereas in civil law systems, it's usually legally impossible 
to assign the moral rights away from the actual person creating the work 
(the employer just usually owns a licence to the economic rights).

If there is any kind of session at KS about this matter, this aspect 
should be taken into account.

Thanks,

-- 
Jiri Kosina
SUSE Labs