>>>>> "Isaac" == Isaac Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Isaac> I have no doubt that when users send patches to me, they
Isaac> agree with the license contained in my source tree.
Isaac> However, IANAL and have no idea if it's actually legally
Isaac> the case that they are agreeing.
I doubt it.
Isaac> Would it be a good idea for darcs to carry license
Isaac> information,
I think not. The user might have a front end that didn't display it.
>From a legal standpoint, the more automatic you make it, the more
plausible the downstream author's claim that he didn't know what was
implied by his submission.
I would simply insist that every patch be accompanied by an explicit
permissions notice and the aggregate digitally signed if I were
worried about future legal issues. (I'm not.) It would be useful
to provide a file containing a standard notice as long as the user
were required to take explicit action to include and sign it.
Isaac> There may be social advantages to not changing a license,
Isaac> but it might be good to eliminate the technical ones by
Isaac> allowing contributers to specify the precise terms on which
Isaac> they're offering the code over to the upstream author.
But the principal impediments to changing licenses are neither social
nor technical; they are the copyleft licenses themselves. The only
answer is to incorporate only code for which you hold the right to
relicense. Technical and social "improvements" in the process are
double-edged; they expose you to more legal risk in proportion to
their convenience.
--
School of Systems and Information Engineering http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
ask what your business can "do for" free software.
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