GPL: Can I transfer copyright from a personal name to an organization? [closed]

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I'm hoping to open source a personal project under a copyleft licence in the near future (for the sake of this question let's say it'll be the GPL). Unfortunately, I don't know anything about starting a non-profit organization for the purpose of holding the copyright for the project; as such, my tentative plan is to have the copyright notice state that I am the copyright holder. The problem with this approach is that if the project takes off and becomes a real community effort, I don't know if having the founder of the project as the sole copyright owner would work well, if at all. Is is possible to change the copyright holder from myself to a non-profit organization if this becomes necessary as time goes on?

tl;dr:

Can I go from

Copyright (C) 2012 Dylan L. Knowles (me)

to

Copyright (C) 2012 Some Non-Profit Organization

if I licence my project using the GPL?

(PS: Mods, I noticed that a lot of licence-related questions have been closed for being off-topic. I've examined the FAQ and I feel that this question is one of the "practical, answerable problems that are unique to the programming profession"; hopefully you agree and this won't be closed!)

Answer 1

I am not a lawyer, but, if I recall correctly, choosing a license and assigning copyright are somewhat orthogonal decisions.

As long as the code is yours (i.e., you own the copyright), you should be able to transfer copyright to a third entity (i.e., a non-profit organization). This is what people do every day when submitting patches to GCC: http://gcc.gnu.org/contribute.html#legal.

As a side note, as long as you own the copyright, you have the freedom to release the sources under a free license (i.e., the GPL) and, at the same time, any other license of this world, even if non-free: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ReleaseUnderGPLAndNF.

Answer 2

Is is possible to change the copyright holder from myself to a non-profit organization if this becomes necessary as time goes on?

Yes such is possible, however, the copyright holder must be clear. That means while your project grows and you start to accept patches, keep in mind that the copyright becomes "patched" too. So to change the copyright holder later on, all copyright holders need to be okay with that.

You might be interested in the Fiduciary Licence Agreement (FLA):

What is the FLA?

The Fiduciary Licence Agreement (FLA) is a copyright assignment that allows one entity to safeguard all of the code created for a project by consolidating copyright (or exclusive exploitation rights) to counteract copyright fragmentation.

The FSFE offers support for it's usage and even a Fiduciary Programme. And I assume it addresses your concerns, however you don't need to found a non-profit yet, so the information around it might be of general help for you, too.