Many open source projects, including the Free Software Foundation, Red Hat and OpenOffice.org require that contributors assign their copyright when they contribute code. Sun, the NetBeans project sponsor, has come up with an innovative Joint Copyright Assignment (“JCA”) that allows contributors to retain their own copyright while sharing a joint copyright interest in the contributed code. This way contributors retain all the rights granted by copyright law while sharing those rights with the open source project sponsor so that the code is protected by both the Sun Public License (“SPL”) and copyright law.

interesting option. we are trying it out with the xaraya project.