Who owns the copyright for the Nagios Plugin code?

Currently, the copyrights for individual files and plugins are mixed. Sometimes, they are copyrighted to the individual that originally wrote the plugin, though any new changes are copyrighted by the Nagios Plugin Development Team (as listed on Sourceforge).

All code is released under the GPLv2.

There is a task to ensure all code is owned (solely or dual copyright) to the Nagios Plugins Development Team, to avoid confusion about ownership in future. This page will be updated to reflect when this has been completed.

All new code will be copyright to the Nagios Plugins Development team. A disclaimer is shown when submitting a new patch to Sourceforge which says:

By submitting a patch, you are stating that:
* this is your own work or you have full rights to publish and license it
* that it can be released under the GPL
If your patch is accepted, we will:
* add a comment with your name when committing to version control
* add your name to the list of contributors in the THANKS file

The reason for copyright ownership is simple: individuals come and go, but the team takes on responsibility for code changes forever. Ambiguity about ownership then causes difficulties later. We are pre-empting issues now by having clarity that the team owns and will be responsible for changes to the core code.