Re: Initial Developer of code written by students for a course?

On 2/19/10 11:56 AM, Blake Winton wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm working with a number of students to fix various bugs in Thunderbird
> as part of an international project course[0], similar to the work David
> Humphrey is doing at Seneca.
>
> One of the students has posted a patch[1] which contains a completely
> new file, which has the tri-license block at the top, saying:
> * The Initial Developer of the Original Code is
> * Mozilla Messaging, Inc.
> * Portions created by the Initial Developer are Copyright (C) 2009
> * the Initial Developer. All Rights Reserved.
> *
> * Contributor(s):
> * Wei Xian Woo <[email protected]>
>
> But I'm not really sure if the values for Initial Developer and
> Contributor(s) are correct.
>
> I know that Mozilla Messaging is forbidden from paying the students,
> because they're already getting grades for the work, so I wonder if the
> initial developer is actually the University that the student is doing
> the course through, or perhaps the University of Toronto where the
> course is being run from, or maybe just the student.
>
> I would welcome any thoughts other than "The Copyright date should be
> (C) 2010". :)

Right newsgroup is probably mozilla.legal. setting followup

The correct Initial Developer is whoever owns the copyright. I am not a 
lawyer, but unless UT has some really onerous copyright policy which assigns 
student work to the university I believe the correct Initial Developer is 
the student.

In any case the "Contributors" section should be empty.

--BDS