Copyright transfer
WHAT IS A COPYRIGHT TRANSFER?
Copyright transfer is similar to a car sale agreement. After it’s signed, the only person who has the right to use the work is the person who purchased it. The original owner loses all economical rights listed in the agreement after it’s signed. In practice, it means that the author of the modifications can decide what happens to their code because the YetiForce Public License doesn’t enforce the “copyleft” rule.
Keep in mind that while being free to transfer the copyright to your own code, modifications for some libraries (licensed under LGPL/GPL/AGPL/OSL) might require the changes to be released under the same license as the original library.
WHAT FUNCTIONALITIES ARE WORTH TRANSFERRING COPYRIGHT?
Each new functionality that contains a part of the client’s research and their know-how should be transferred to him together with its economic copyright. In order to avoid doubts which functionalities should be transferred, a detailed list of functionalities, whose copyrights will be transferred, should be prepared at the analysis stage.
WHAT FUNCTIONALITIES ARE NOT WORTH TRANSFERRING COPYRIGHT?
All functionalities that don’t seem to be essential from the perspective of the client’s property rights protection, and don’t breach the client’s know-how should remain under the software producer’s license. It particularly applies to modifications that expand the existing functionalities (eg. further development of the search engine built into the system). If the rights to the expanded search engine are transferred then the later versions of the system won’t include that modification, which in practice will cause the following issues:
- More difficult updates for basic system functionalities;
- Rewriting similar code in order to develop the functionality by the producer, which will cause conflicts between the default application and the client’s version of the functionality;
- The code whose copyright was transferred is almost never developed by the customer, which causes technological debt;
- Increased maintenance and development costs.
COPYRIGHT TRANSFER FROM PRODUCER’S PERSPECTIVE
The producer of the YetiForce software may transfer the copyrights for each new work that is the result of the client's or partner's order, as long as it has been described in the order and accepted by the Parties.
COPYRIGHT TRANSFER FROM PARTNER’S PERSPECTIVE
The YetiForce Integrator may transfer copyrights for any new code created by the Producer for the Partner, which is implemented on the client's order, as long as it is described in the order and accepted by the Parties.