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In an open sourced project who is the owner?

Asked 6 years ago Active 5 years, 10 months ago Viewed 2k times

I am working on an open sourced project with some developers.

11 It occurred to me that I was not sure (legally) who the owner actually is due to it being an open
source project.

Is the ownership spit equally between us contributors?

1
If no, how is it calculated?

contributor ownership

Share Improve this question Follow edited Aug 16 '15 at 12:09 asked Jun 26 '15 at 4:13
Mnementh Trevor Clarke
10.6k 2 30 76 5,674 14 49

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1 Answer Active Oldest Votes

In general if you write the code you own the copyright

 In general, if you write the code, you own the copyright.
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11 You may have written module A, or the file B, or the function C, or the line D. Doesn't matter who
else worked on those parts, the parts you write are your own, and the parts you didn't write
aren't.

The only difference is that, since this is an open source project, your co-contributors have the
same rights as users of the software - they have access to the source, and can freely use, derive,
and redistribute the source code to the extent allowed by the license. What they can't do is claim
parts they didn't write as their own.

One notable exception is if you explicitly assign the copyright away. This is done so that the
project can relicense in the future without having to bother the original authors. A common
method of doing so is via Contributor License Agreements. Also, if you are writing code for
compensation, check the terms because you're most likely working as a for-hire programmer,
where your code is owned by whoever is paying you.

As for who owns the whole, that's a difficult question to answer. Usually this is agreed upon or
fought out in court, where one method may be to estimate the number of man-hours each
author spent on the project, and multiply by some expected compensation rate. This is no
different than how to split assets when a business partnership splits.

Share Improve this answer Follow edited Jun 26 '15 at 5:10 answered Jun 26 '15 at 5:00

congusbongus
8,097 27 74

That isn't quite true. The software as a whole is a joint work, and all (creative) participants have joint
ownership of the result. Ownership can't always be traced to e.g. a particular line of code as that line would
only make sense in context and so is inseparable from the context. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Jun 26 '15
at 11:10

What if you wrote the function, and each line was re-written historically multiple times by different people.
Who owns each piece of line, the first person who written the line (in case it still exists), or the recent
modifier (depending how far the line has been changed/rewritten)? Or if ownership is per line, then if you
changed 5 characters in somebody else line, then you own these 5 characters, and the rest not. And so on.
– kenorb Aug 20 '15 at 13:51

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