Omer Zak wrote on 2003-08-13: > > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > > > > Than another guy, took my library, transform it to another > > > > language, released it as GPL also, but deleted my > > > > copyright notice. > > In my opinion, if the other guy released his expression under GPL, > then the argument is moot. shtirlitz could take the other guy's > stuff, reinstate his (shtirlitz's) credit and release a X.(Y+1) > version with all credits. > IANAL but I believe it's impossible to say whether shtirlitz shares copyright for the translated library without examining the sources. Since both libraries are GPL, there is nothing to gain by avoiding the derived work status, so I'd guess he helped himself to anough parts of the original ;-).
However, the important question is not whether he deleted stirlitz's copyright notice but whether he omitted him from the credits. Technically, all non-trivial contributors share the copyright, so FOSS projects normally have constantly growing copyright lists [2]_. I've never seen projects who actually write out the list in the copyright header - normally it's constrained to a couple of names and the credits list somewhere in the documentain is the real record. Informally it's understood that all people in the credits list share the copyright [2]_. Now, denying people their part in the credit list, that would be a really ugly deed. Is that the case here? . [1] There are some projects who don't have growing copyright lists, because all contributors explicitly assign the copyright to some central authority, like the FSF. The benefits of this model are mainly theoretical, IMHO. . [2] This fact is widely acknowledged, mainly in its consequence that you practically can't change a project's license once you get many conributions, because you need to get permission from all of them. -- Beni Cherniavsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
