Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Karsten Behrmann <BearPerson AT gmx.net>]

Benoit PAPILLAULT <benoit.papillault AT sourcemage.org> wrote:
<snip>
Andrew:
> > Maybe it would be good to setup an official policy on this stuff that
> > can be applied to all current and future things we release. We can come
> > to a consensus on what our policy for copyrighting, changeloging, etc
> > should be and then ensure that all files/products follow those guidelines.
Yup, that would be a great idea. There are people occasionally that say
"But I didn't read that anywhere", so a common policy would be great.

> For instance, I've heard that it's better to assign copyright to a 
> common organisation (like a project) to avoid the burden of contact all 
> the contributors if you want to change the original license, say from 
> GPL to dual GPL/BSD for instance.
Yup, I'd say we should make "Source Mage" the owner of all our stuff
(since it releases everything, I guess that is the case already)
then everything can be decided by the community/devs/PL.

> I also know that (in France at least) authorship is /in theory/ 
> automatically granted whenever you make a work even if it is never 
> published. The problem being that it's very hard to proof and thus 
> national organisation (INPI in France) is trying to convince you that 
> you'd better registered everything, trademarks or patents (but of 
> course, it's a business for them).
Yeah, but I guess we should once and for all say that everything submitted
to the project is to be released under the GPL, which means that after
changes (incorporating the work into the rest of the project) the project
Source Mage can own the copyright of the whole and release it as its.

(of course, the same GPL would permit anyone to do the same thing... change
something (put their name at the top of source files for example) and release
it as theirs. I have no problem with them doing that as long as they don't
patent it in my face... But AFAIK the GPL wouldn't permit that)

> PS: I do not want to have my name in /every/ file...
Okay, currently we have one and only one official place for credits: The
ChangeLog. I have added all former contributors that I know of at the
bottom. This ought to be enough IMO. If people insist on it we could add
a menu option to the installer to view the changelog, I wouldn't need it.
We might be legally required to put the ChangeLog onto the ISO though.

One thing, regarding our old friend Hamish Greig (let's see if he picks this
up and replies to this thread again):
I've put him into the ChangeLog as He Who Does Not Wish To Be Named,
since I think he deserves credit for what he's done, but has repeatedly
asserted that he does not want his name mentioned.

I'm not a lawyer, but does anything require us then to still keep his name
around? We should since he's contributed to it, but in what seems to me a
legally solid enough way he has freed us from this requirement. But again,
I'm not a lawyer either. Maybe he will explicitly set this right.

So Far,
  Karsten

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