A Theory of Joint Authorship for Free and Open Source Software Projects

Abstract

It is commonly believed that every contributor to a free and open source software project owns copyright in their incremental contribution to the project, and owns it solely. It is also commonly believed that one must avoid a legal conclusion that the project code is jointly authored—and therefore jointly owned—even though the legal concept of joint authorship is strongly consistent with the social construct of free software. This view is based on a belief that the application of the existing copyright law of joint authorship will undermine the intended operation of the free software license and thus fail to support the goals of the free software movement. This article takes the position that, under U.S. law, joint authorship is a legal framework for copyright ownership in a free and open source software project that presents no greater risk than those risks inherent in the concept of sequential ownership and may even be superior, providing some benefits that are not available under the current commonly-accepted theory of ownership.