Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Seth Alan Woolley <seth AT positivism.org>]

On Thu, Feb 10, 2005 at 12:52:17PM +0100, Karsten Behrmann wrote:
> 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.

The social contract and GPL are already pretty clear.  Any policy would 
be redundant, however, redundancy isn't always bad, and we could put a 
wiki page up pointing to the GPL and SC provisions.

> 
> > 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.

We could, but it's not necessary as the social contract is a binding 
contract, and thus is held as strong as any organization.  Those who are 
a party to a contract don't need to file a separate corporation just to 
have a contract agreement.

> 
> > 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, 

That's in our social contract. It's in the second sentence and is the 
essence of the first bullet point:

http://sourcemage.org/info/about/socialcontract.html

 1. Source Mage Will Remain 100% Free

 We promise to keep the Source Mage GNU/Linux Distribution entirely free 
 (as in freedom). **** This means that all software we release will be 
 licensed under the GNU General Public License, all of our documentation 
 will be released under the GNU Free Documentation License, and 
 third-party software included in our base distribution will be under a 
 GPL compatible license, as defined by the Free Software Foundation. ****

(emphasis between **** not in original)

> 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.

Copyright can be transferred at any time, and copyright registration is 
not required.  The Berne Convention is clear on that.  Copyright is 
endowed the moment the work in question is created, no sooner and no 
later.

Both France and the US were attendees of the Berne Conventions as I 
recall.

The only exception to this is _who_ gets the copyright.  It always goes 
to the creator person, unless that person is an employee who worked on 
paid time to create it, or if there are other contract provisions 
determining who gets copyright assigned to them.  Our social contract 
could be modified to include whether or not copyright of submissions is 
transferred to the group, but I believe this is a complete waste of 
time.

> 
> (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)

The GPL wouldn't permit it.  See section 7:

 7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent 
 infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), 
 conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or 
 otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not 
 excuse you from the conditions of this License.  If you cannot 
 distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this 
 License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you 
 may not distribute the Program at all.  **** For example, if a patent 
 license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by 
 all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then 
 the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to 
 refrain entirely from distribution of the Program. ****

(emphasis between **** not in original)

> 
> > 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.

The ChangeLog and any GPL-code modification histories should be placed on 
the ISO, according to section 1 of the GPL.

> 
> 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.

He could resubmit his code to us with his copyright notice changed to a 
different name.  But section 1 of the GPL is pretty clear, copyright 
(all, in fact) notices that refer to the GPL are to remain intact:

 1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's
 source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you
 conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate
 copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; **** keep intact all the
 notices that refer to this License **** and to the absence of any warranty;
 and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License
 along with the Program.

(emphasis between **** not in original)

Even if he changed his name and resubmitted code, it would still be up 
to us on whether we want to commit the changes in.

Seth

-- 
Seth Alan Woolley [seth at positivism.org], SPAM/UCE is unauthorized
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Security Team Leader Source Mage GNU/Linux http://www.sourcemage.org

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