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  • From: Andrew <afrayedknot AT thefrayedknot.armory.com>
  • To: sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [SM-Discuss] ISO contrib file
  • Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2005 16:29:05 -0800

Source Mage afaik is a social entity which is sufficient for releasing
and copyrighting code under the gpl (but i could be wrong). I dont think
its necessary to acquire a legal status in some country, it just doesnt
really make sense to me why that would be necessary.

It also doesnt make sense to me how anyone but Source Mage could claim a
copyright on something that "Source Mage" is releasing. When you release
something, you claim the copyright on it, if a person is releasing the
official source mage installer they're doing so as a part of the Source
Mage team, the entity releasing it is thus "Source Mage", not the individual
physically doing so for Source Mage.

The authors can of course claim copyright on their individual changes,
but they gave them to Source Mage (again, a social entity) under the gpl,
and as members of the source mage team participated in creating a work
that was owned and then released by the social entity Source Mage. However
I dont think that any of those people could claim copyright on the entire
installer /unless/ they were re-releasing it themselves as something
other than an official source mage installer. The social entity "Source
Mage" is releasing the official installer and a bunch of other things
(sorcery, grimoire), many of which dont seem to follow this self-promoting
trend of giving oneself credit where it is not appropriate to do so.

The gpl doesnt say you have to keep copyright notices of the original
author on the software (unless they gave it to you with a license that
said that, and i dont think the gpl says that, but Im prepared to be
wrong), you just have to say what you've modified from the original,
and maintain whatever other liscensing restrictions the software was given
to you under. None of those contributors (to my knowledge) released
their changes to the code to Source Mage with the stipulation that they
get a copyright notice at the top and it cannot be removed.

IMO those copyright notices were not their's to claim in the first place.

If any of those individuals or another individual wanted to they could
take the installer (sorcery, grimoire, whatever) and re-release it under
their own copyright provided they cause it to carry a prominent notice
of what they changed (so as not to hurt the original authors reputation,
and/or to make it known who did the work).

In short, if you want your name shining at the front of every file
re-release the code as a derived work of our own and slap your name on
the front of it, the gpl allows you to do that, but all the people who
did the work get credit in the ChangeLog where credit is supposed to be
given (not a copyright notice), and /that/ part cant be removed.

Maybe my understanding of how releasing code and copyrighting code works
is totally flawed, again Im not a lawyer either.

-Andrew

On Wed, Feb 09, 2005 at 01:11:52PM -0800, Seth Alan Woolley wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 09, 2005 at 09:19:11PM +0100, Benoit PAPILLAULT wrote:
> > Karsten Behrmann a ?crit :
> > >Hi all!
> > >We recently removed all the copyright junk from the top of smgl.install.
> > >The question came up if that was legally completely right and if
> > >those people should not be mentioned somewhere.
> > >So (also in absence of a well-kept ChangeLog) there is no other
> > >place anyone could see who worked on the ISO.
> > >
> > >So I whipped up a /CONTRIB file for the ISO to put all credits in.
> > >It currently resides at //sgl/cauldron/proj/proj2/iso/skeleton/CONTRIB
> > >I'm still wondering how to sort the people... maybe alphabetically would
> > >be best...
> >
> > The installer (currently the single file smgl.install) is a standalone
> > software (but so far distributed only as part of the ISO). It might be
> > released as such (ie standalone) in the future. That's why I think it's
> > better to keep copyright notice along with name of the contributor in
> > the file itself. This does not prevent us from maintaining a CONTRIB
> > file as well...
>
> I don't think the status of standaloneness matters that much.
>
> >
> > The next question I raised is whether "Source Mage GNU/Linux" can be
> > considered as a legal entity to which copyright can be assigned. AFAIK,
> > "Source Mage GNU/Linux" is not registered as a company, non profit
> > organisation, association or something like that.
> >
> > I'd like those questions to be answered for the sake of clarity.
>
> It exists by virtue of the social contract. I could file it with a
> land-owning jurisdiction in a day for fifty dollars (25 for non-profit
> corporation and 25 for the name registration). We'd need to make a
> yearly report and such, but in any case, I don't think it's that big of
> a deal either unless we wanted to enforce the copyright, in which case,
> copyright exists the moment it is written according to the Berne
> Convention, notice notwithstanding. Technically the individual
> contributors will always own their own code portions unless they cede it
> specifically to the organization. Technically also, because the
> original portions are released by the GPL, one can copyright the
> aggregate of others' contributions (so long as the respective licenses
> allow) and copyright the collection.
>
> At least in US law and probably in most countries that are recognizers
> of the Berne Convention on Copyrights.
>
> So, either/or, both, or none as far as labelling is concerned.
> Copyright registration with an enforcing entity for criminal and tort
> purposes is another matter, and can actually be done pretty late in the
> process, like right before you sue somebody.
>
> IANAL, too.
>
> Seth
>
> --
> Seth Alan Woolley [seth at positivism.org], SPAM/UCE is unauthorized
> Key id EF10E21A = 36AD 8A92 8499 8439 E6A8 3724 D437 AF5D EF10 E21A
> http://smgl.positivism.org:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xEF10E21A
> Security Team Leader Source Mage GNU/Linux http://www.sourcemage.org



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--
__________________________________________________________________________
|Andrew D. Stitt | astitt at sourcemage.org |
|irc: afrayedknot | afrayedknot at t.armory.com |
|aim: thefrayedknot or iteratorplusplus | acedit at armory.com |
|Sorcery Team Lead | ftp://t.armory.com/ |
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