On 5/12/2010 12:36 PM, RJack wrote:
Absolutely not true. Erik Andersen may hold copyright in some
contributed modifying code in a derivative work but he does not own
any exclusive rights in "BusyBox 0.60.3." as a registered work.
Erik Anderson created a derivative work through his changes, and he
is therefore a copyright owner of this work. Creators of derivative
works own copyright in those works.
"When an original author and an author of a derivative work are
different, their respective rights are generally addressed by a
contract between them.[24] In these situations, it is clear that
two works have been created, requiring separate copyright
registrations to preserve those rights in court."
http://www.oblon.com/media/index.php?id=41#_ednref24
Correct. In the case of BusyBox, the agreement that replaces the
contract mentioned by this excerpt is the GPL, and if there were a
dispute between the prior authors and Erik Anderson, the prior
authors would need to register their version in order to sue. But
there is no copyright dispute between these authors (except that one
of the previous authors does not care to sue to protect his
copyright), so this is irrelevant. Erik Anderson registered a version
in which he holds copyright to sue infringers of that copyright.