Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Eric Sandall <eric AT sandall.us>]

Quoting Andrew <afrayedknot AT thefrayedknot.armory.com>:
> 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.

That's pretty much how I understand it as well, thanks Andrew. :)

-sandalle

--
Eric Sandall                     |  Source Mage GNU/Linux Developer
eric AT sandall.us PGP: 0xA8EFDD61  |  http://www.sourcemage.org/
http://eric.sandall.us/          |  SysAdmin @ Inst. Shock Physics @ WSU
http://counter.li.org/  #196285  |  http://www.shock.wsu.edu/

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