> > From: "Constantine A. Murenin" <mureninc () gmail ! com> > > If we do not hear from you, we will assume that you have no objection. > Is this for real?! > Who do they think they are? ... >People should not bother to respond to such nonsense, and then sue > OpenSSL for obvious copyright infringement
I think "Don't bother to respond, and plan to sue" would be a poor response, that would just hurt everyone involved. Of course silence does not generally grant permission..... But the people in that project might be able to convincingly deliver some kind of argument that they've had implicit or "understood" permissions made at time of submission to use contributions however the project collectively agrees to use them. I think it would be most helpful if say Three or Four significant contributors would either Object / Say No on the basis of disapproving of the "Change procedure" Or get their lawyers to draft a Cease & Decist, On behalf of both themself and their co-authors, based on the implied intent to infringe. And also, Go remind those folks that distributed Binaries based on OpenSSL tree will be infringing with a changed license document if Even 1 Contributor has not agreed to the re-license. Also, there is no work-around for a contributor denying. They might have the idea of simply Removing and Replacing a contribution (Even if you can accurately identify and rewrite specific lines of code from a certain author) does not necessarily make the distribution Non-infringing, As later code is likely to have built on top of earlier code. A suggested concept would be contributors Replying to the inquiry with something firmly saying No, and reminding them that Derivative works include non-literal copying. EG [EXAMPLE ] language: "I do not approve of the manner in which this license change is being negotiated; All my co-authors/co-contributors to this code base must explicitly agree to the change in principle for me to consider granting permission. I Do Not consent at this time to any license change regarding any part of any of my submitted or committed code, Nor any modified version or derivative work of my contribution(s) created by non-literal copying of my work deviating from the terms of the the OpenSSL+SSLeay license documents found in the source tree at the time that my contribution was made. If a license statement was not included with any work I submitted, then my default terms are: Copyright, All Rights Reserved. I hereby pre-emptively remind you that: Derivative work includes all code added to the project, even by other developers that followed my contributions in time which extended any functionality on top of OpenSSL based on changing or extending my earlier work, or related to my code in any way, Including design style, naming conventions, usage of headers and function prototypes, variable names, and miscellaneous aesthetic qualities of my contributions. Please recall the following text from the SSLeay license terms which applies to my contributions and all OpenSSL project code based on SSLeay: * The licence and distribution terms for any publically available version or * derivative of this code cannot be changed. i.e. this code cannot simply be * copied and put under another distribution licence * [including the GNU Public Licence.] " -- -JH