Bart Martens <[email protected]> writes: > On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 01:29:52PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote: > > The sensible *default* assumption is that when an upstream asserts > > that the license on their work is $foo, they know what they're > > talking about > > Yes, "on their work". > > > even when portions are copyright other people/entities. > > No, this is not a sensible default assumption.
I agree with the distinction Bart is drawing here. When someone asserts a license on *their own* work – once we grant that they do hold copyright in the work they're describing – the assumption that they know what they're talking about is sensible, because we have direct evidence from the party we have accepted as the copyright holder. When someone asserts a license on *someone else's* work, the assumption (in the absence of further evidence from the copyright holder) that they know what they're talking about is not sensible. There is demonstrable widespread confusion – in the programming community, and in the general public – about how to determine what license one has in a work received. So it's sensible to assume, in the absence of further evidence from the copyright holder, that there is *no* license on the work received that can be passed along to Debian users. This allows us to take a copyright holder's word for it that they know the license *they* are granting, but means that for a work under the copyright of some third party, we need more than a mere assertion of license from the recipient. -- \ “Please to bathe inside the tub.” —hotel room, Japan | `\ | _o__) | Ben Finney -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/[email protected]
