Does contributing your code to some FOSS project automatically give away your copyright on that code?

A little while back, Michael Meeks published a lengthy piece about copyright assignment (not nearly as lengthy as the articles he links to on untangling Wittgenstein's net). Go on, read it (Michael's stuff, not the net). It's worth your time. When you get to the bottom, follow the link to Dave Neary's take on assignment as well.

Canonical chief executive Mark Shuttleworth has called for an uniform copyright assignment policy for contributors to free and open source software projects.

Michael Meeks's posting on copyright assignment is not a quick read, but it's worth the effort; this is a more thorough look at the issue than your editor has seen elsewhere.

In an interview with IT Wire, Mark Shuttleworth argues that all copyright assignment systems are equal, saying further that what Intel, Canonical and other for-profit companies ask for in the process are the same things asked for by Free Software non-profit organizations like the Free Software Foundation.

How many contributions are being left out of CUPS because of this stupid copyright assignment? It looks to me that such software is doomed to remain crippled as long as companies like Apple are in charge of their maintenance.

There is free software. And there is free software by Apple. And Oracle. And Canonical.

The GNOME Foundation has set out its rules for modules which require copyright assignment, but it will come down to a case-by-case decision for future modules

If everything other project is a game, it's only fair that every other assignment is a game too: your task is to produce a game that shows the player increasing numbers of items and asks them to spot which item appears only once.

Michael Meeks, Bradley Kuhn and Mark Shuttleworth discussed copyright assignment agreements and copyright licensing agreements at the Desktop Summit in Berlin. GNOME Foundation executive director Karen Sandler moderated the short but revealing discussion. Be sure to also read the insightful comments to the article.