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Comment by bunnie | Hacker News Reader

Work-for-hire open source contributions often already bear a copyright holder of the entity paying for the work. The problem isn't who is the copyright holder.

The problem is that the license assigned says that anyone is free to use the code. Anyone is a set of people that includes the contributor, which then triggers the interpretation that the research is incrementally in the contributor's benefit and thus disqualified from preferential tax treatment.

You'd need a custom license where everyone in the world could use the results except for the contributor, and then like, a source control system that hides the source files from the contributor's view of the repository.

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> Anyone is a set of people that includes the contributor

Should every other member of that set, i.e. everyone minus contributor, also amortize their software development expenses because they have a hypothetical, non-exercised right to use some (i.e. all) open-source "R&D" software... somewhere? Or should the tax liability be invoked starting on the date of first use of any open-source code?

If some code is upstreamed to Linux kernel or userspace, should this obligate every Linux distro consumer to amortize their Linux software development expenses?

There must be _some_ legal boundary for dispersal of the tax obligation with respect to open-source code, since it self-evidently cannot be intended to apply to the entire universe of businesses and union of all OSS development. If necessary, a court case can establish this distinction.

> a source control system that hides the source files from the contributor's view of the repository.

How would that work?

> You'd need a custom license where everyone in the world could use the results except for the contributor

That one is incompatible with copyright laws in many countries outside USA.

The point is that it's a ridiculous and impractical workaround that makes no sense

^^ this

> That one is incompatible with copyright laws in many countries outside USA.

How so? You can't sign away your interest in a copywrighted work?

The USA hasn’t managed to completely impose their idea of intellectual property on everyone yet. Some countries you can’t sign away authorship even if you can commercial rights.

I am unsure if I fully understand your point, so let me ask a related question to see if I understand.

For many open source projects, there is a CLA (contributor license agreement) that must be signed before contributions can be accepted. The Free Software Foundation (which holds the copyright for most/all? GNU tools) is pretty in/famous for requiring it. Their reasoning: If there are copyright violations, they have the time and financial resources to pursue the violators.

Are you saying that these CLAs and their intended purpose are invalid in some jurisdictions? If yes, please share some examples. To be clear: I'm only interested in "normal/regular" jurisdictions that have at least accepted the Berne Convention.

Parent objected to:

> You'd need a custom license where everyone in the world could use the results except for the contributor

> That one is incompatible with copyright laws in many countries outside USA.

Does authorship confer usage rights?

In fact, many countries don't let you sign away your statutory rights in general.

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