Your typical corporate IP lawyer might feel queasy about the collective copyright aspect, but so much of the open source world works this way now... they can suffer in their jocks.
One important question they'll ask is: "Who can enforce the copyright and licence?" (Which is when the subtle difference between joint and collective copyright matters.)
Non-trivial contributions are made under the terms of the Apache 2.0 Licence, so regardless of who owns the copyright, everyone operates under those same terms.
One common rationalisation for copyright assignment is ease of relicensing, should it be necessary. That's much less important when operating under the terms of a permissive license.
The answer is only the owner of an exclusive right of copyright has standing to sue. So any of these open source projects that have no copyright assignments would have trouble suing. But in practice, who cares. Unless you want to sue people, it literally doesn't matter.
The only folks who often care about suing are those who are trying to enforce certain types of share-alike licenses (GPL, etc) because they are ideological.
If you are using Apache or BSD, you probably aren't suing folks because you are fine with them commercializing it or doing whatever with it (and if you are using these liceneses and aren't okay with that, you may want to reevaluate your life choices)
Joint holders can also enforce copyright, though open source codebases work more like collective copyright. That said, non-exclusive Linux kernel copyright holders have performed enforcement activities (quietly or noisily)...
"Joint holders can also enforce copyright, though open source codebases work more like collective copyright."
Joint copyright is basically non-existent in the US. For example, you must intend to create a joint work at the time of creation. You can't make it joint later on by signing a document saying it's joint with someone. There are other issues too.
This is deliberate, as joint owners each own a 100% enforceable set of rights, and the law doesn't really want tons of people running around claiming to own the same work.
"That said, non-exclusive Linux kernel copyright holders have performed enforcement activities (quietly or noisily)..."
Not in the US. It's not possible in the US. It'll get dismissed immediately.
> Your typical corporate IP lawyer might feel queasy about the collective copyright aspect, but so much of the open source world works this way now... they can suffer in their jocks.
This is a bad attitude if you want buy-in from large organizations. If you're not worried about that, no problem, but if buy-in is your goal (and I'm sure it's Apple's goal here) you can't just tell potential contributors to "suffer in their jocks."
Sure, it's flippant, but do recall that the entire concept of open source absolutely terrified IP lawyers not that long ago (and in some cases, still does).
Lawyers who are too conservative to allow their company's developers to contribute to open source projects (that they don't own) have a problem. Open source is way beyond pussy-footing around just to make corporate lawyers feel comfortable.
And seriously, if Apple can do it, why can't they?
This comment doesn't make a lot of sense. The "corporate IP lawyers" being referred to would be Apple's own counsel, not those of "potential contributors".
Your typical corporate IP lawyer might feel queasy about the collective copyright aspect, but so much of the open source world works this way now... they can suffer in their jocks.
One important question they'll ask is: "Who can enforce the copyright and licence?" (Which is when the subtle difference between joint and collective copyright matters.)
Non-trivial contributions are made under the terms of the Apache 2.0 Licence, so regardless of who owns the copyright, everyone operates under those same terms.
One common rationalisation for copyright assignment is ease of relicensing, should it be necessary. That's much less important when operating under the terms of a permissive license.