Re: [PATCH v13 1/2] serial: exar: split out the exar code from 8250_pci

[Jan Kiszka]

On 2017-02-06 15:06, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 06, 2017 at 02:49:07PM +0100, Jan Kiszka wrote:
>> On 2017-02-03 22:31, Sudip Mukherjee wrote:
>>> On Friday 03 February 2017 02:02 PM, Jan Kiszka wrote:
>>>> BTW, are you personally the copyright holder or your employer Codethink?
>>>> Depends on your contractual situation, but the former is less common.
>>>
>>> Well, Codethink has nothing to do with this patch. This was a voluntary
>>> work started before I joined Codethink, but then I joined Codethink and
>>> found very little time to finish this. So finally now its done.
>>>
>>> https://lists.kernelnewbies.org/pipermail/kernelnewbies/2015-November/015372.html
>>>
>>
>> Hmm, why using your corporate email address then? This suggests a
>> different copyright situation.
>>
>> Funnily, I just received this question internally: How can you tell
>> apart if someone sends a personal contribution via his/her employer
>> account from someone contributing on behalf of a company, thus with that
>> company holding the rights? I argued that no one would do the former to
>> prevent wrong accounting, but you just proved a counterexample. :)
> 
> There are numerous companies that do this, some create whole shell
> orginizations in order to "hide" their kernel contributions for various
> "interesting" reasons.

I was not talking about companies but individuals: If they use their
company address for something written in their spare time (and their
contract allow to keep ownership of that), they needless suggest their
company holds the copyright that way around. If they stick with a
private address, it remains more clearly in their hand.

What you mentioned is a different story and can indeed be interesting
for the companies when they realize they would like for prove their code
ownership to some legal authority for whatever reason.

Anyway, off-topic now.

Jan

> 
> Fun stuff.  I suggest having your internal people talk to your lawyers,
> they should know all about this (and if not, have those lawyers talk to
> the LF lawyers...)
> 
> But that's not the issue here, we know Sudip :)
> 
> thanks,
> 
> greg k-h
> 

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