On Wed, Jul 10, 2002 at 04:11:07PM +1000, Manuel M T Chakravarty wrote: > "Simon Marlow" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote, > > The original idea was to stick to a single BSD license for > > libraries/base, and I think that's what we should do. > > > > What do we need to do to make this happen? I must admit this is one of > > the areas of licensing that I'm most confused about. Should the single > > BSD license list *all* the copyright holders, or is it ok to list just > > one (say the University of Glasgow)? > > IANAL, but I am pretty sure that you have to list all > copyright holders. The BSD license doesn't put many > restrictions in place, but the two that it insists on is > that the copyright holder must be named and that the > disclaimer must remain intact. So, I would think that you > need a disclaimer that lists all copyright holders, too.
I'm not sure about the copyright notice. Maybe you do need to list everybody. Maybe it's sufficient to put them in the modules (and the documentation generated by Haddock). But I'm pretty sure we don't need a disclaimer listing lots of names. We're not trying to follow lots of variant BSD licences; we're asking people to agree to release their code under a single licence. For the base package, this has to be the GHC licence, because that would be too hard to change. The licence includes a non-endorsement clause and a disclaimer mentioning "the University and the contributors", and surely everyone can agree to that. > (Technically, this is still incorrect, as > all kinds of people not affiliated with Glasgow University > have hacked the code and the copyright to that code belongs > to these individuals or their affiliations and not to > Glasgow University.) True, but the fix for that is to update the copyright line in the modules concerned. > AFAIK, the only way to simplify all this is to do as the FSF > and insist on written copyright assignments for all > contributions. (And even this only works cleanly under US > law and maybe UK law, but not under continental European law > if I understand the situation correctly.) Having assigned a small piece of code to FSF, I don't think this represents a simplification. I understand why they require it, but I don't think our needs are the same -- I think lots of copyright holders with a single licence would suit us better. _______________________________________________ Cvs-libraries mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/cvs-libraries
