On 6/7/2010 2:05 AM, [email protected] wrote:
John Plocher<[email protected]> wrote:
Changing a license is amazingly simple in theory, yet complex enough
in practice to be nearly impossible:
The owners of the current copyright simply need to decide to relicense
or dual license their code under a new license.
Unfortunately, the tens of thousands of people who have contributed to
GNOME over the last decade or so probably aren't of the same mind as
to whether or not they wish to change, much less on which license they
wish to change to. And, unless they *ALL* agree to the same details,
it can't be changed.
In the European Copyright law as well as in the US Copyright law, you need
to have a decsion that get's a majority of the contribution (not from lines
but from Copyright relevant creation) and all contributors with more than
aprox. 5% contributions need to vote for the change.
I cannot speak for GNOME, but for e.g. the Linux kernel, you would need
much less than 50 pro votes.
Jörg
That's not true for US Law. I went through this process awhile ago for
some textual material (a compilation book), and several US IP Lawyers
were very much in agreement that *every* author had to give explicit
permission to publish or change anything that they owned copyright on.
The US doesn't have any concept of "abandonware" or "community rights"
to a copyright. The author has full ownership of the work, and the only
non-authorized use of such a work is in the very narrow statutory
exemptions (commonly called "fair use"). Relicensing without explicit
permission would be a very cut-and-dried lawsuit win for the aggrieved
author of the relicensed work here in the US.
This (plus Joerg's reply elsewhere) illustrates a big problem with
copyrights - there really is no agreement on what they mean and can do
with them. At best, the Berne treaty boils down to: "I'll respect that
work X was copyrighted in country Y starting on date Z, and I'll treat X
as if it were copyrighted in my country on the same date." That it.
Nothing else. Nothing about what being "copyrighted" means.
Consequently, it's a horrible mess.
--
Erik Trimble
Java System Support
Mailstop: usca22-123
Phone: x17195
Santa Clara, CA
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