Re: [tlug] Zurus distributions experience

[Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com>]

On 2009-08-12 18:16 +0900 (Wed), Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> Lars Kotthoff writes:
> 
>  > is better than "You can have it and do whatever you want with it." 
>  > given that a license can be changed.
> 
> Feel free to try to get the license on FSF-owned copyrights, or the
> Linux kernel, or OpenSSL, changed.  I don't think you can do it.

Actually, I'd missed this bit, but you're being very kind there. Not
only cannot Lars get the Linux kernel license changed, not even Linus
can do that.

The issue is, of course, that copyright in various bits of the work is
owned by so many different people that it's a practical impossibility to
track them all down (including the estates of those who are deceased)
and get them to agree to a license change. In many cases, I suspect,
we don't even know who the various owners are of the copyrights in any
particular file; patches of less than extraordinary magnitude often go
in without updating the copyright notice to indicate that the file is
now a derivative work by the patch author. Keep in mind that, in the
U.S. at least, you cannot generally get claim to the copyright on a work
by saying, "when you submit your work here (e.g., submitting a patch to
a bug tracking system), we get copyright." You have to have an explicit
agreement signed by the contributor.

We ran headlong into this on the NetBSD project; NetBSD will never be
properly available under a three-clause BSD license because of this.

The modern take, of course, is now to get copyright contribution
agreements from every contributor, and have the copyright solely owned
by one entity. This at least leaves the possibility of a licence change,
if the entity cares to co-operate. It also allows that entity to exploit
the software for whatever purposes they like, which could send certain
GPL-loving folks into a tizzy, but that seems to me not such a big deal
if that entity is also the primary contributor to the project, since the
project might never have existed without them, anyway.

cjs
-- 
Curt Sampson       <cjs@example.com>        +81 90 7737 2974
           Functional programming in all senses of the word:
                   http://www.starling-software.com