Hi,

I have a been wondering recently about attribution under the MIT License.

Code in Pharo and code contributed to Pharo is and should be licensed under the 
MIT License.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License

Contributors sign an extra agreement. 

  http://files.pharo.org/media/PharoSoftwareDistributionAgreement.pdf

Here, contributors give a license so Pharo can include their code.

As I read the MIT license the original author keeps the copyright and about the 
only requirement is that that copyright shall be included when the code is 
used. The extra agreement does not transfer copyright.

So, all authors should be mentioned in the general Pharo MIT license.

The reason I was thinking about this is that many people on the list seems to 
be under the impression that MIT licensed code means that you can freely copy 
it, like most recently in the discussions about Dophin Smalltalk. I think 
copying MIT licensed code requires proper attribution.

If people copy (my, someone else's) code from Pharo to somewhere else, I want 
them to at least acknowledge that fact, preferably include a general Pharo 
(contributors) copyright, but ideally (my, their) copyright.

But that would also mean that Pharo has to do the same. I think we should list 
and update the official contributor list, including the historical list of 
original authors going back.

Am I right or wrong ?

How do other people feel about this ?

Sven


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