Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
The Original post was simply letting everyone know that upstream changed their license. If you have an issue with that, they would be the ones to address it, not anyone here in Fedora land. Technically, if upstream bungled its relicencing, Fedora has no grounds to redistribute under the new licence and is committing fencing (or something similar, I don't know the exact English term) That's why people are concerned here (both at this exact incident and at the approach advocated for packaging legal checks) -- Nicolas Mailhot -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Wed, 11 Jul 2012 15:31:43 -0700, Adam Williamson wrote: Look at it this way: it's the *project* which is in the exposed, dangerous position, not the contributors. You're arguing it almost the opposite way. That must be a misunderstanding. Perhaps as a result of reading too quickly. I've pointed out that I've observed a lot of effort from the base developers trying to track contributions in commit comments, in the bug tracker, in the documentation, in inline credits, in copyright notices for individuals. In my first reply in this thread, I asked Petr what contribution(s) he refers to. Whether it's a contribution that has been tracked with a copyright notice or just in the list of patch authors or just somewhere else such as in revision control. Why did I ask that? Because it would be a clear case if his name appeared anywhere in the files (and I told what I had found). On the contrary, if it's an unknown/unspecified contribution, which may be gone meanwhile, details would be needed, or else nobody could investigate whether it may have been ignored or not tracked properly. The fact alone that I could not find his name anywhere other than in the translations caused me to point out what I think may have happened - never claiming that there may not be any legal risks. I've been mentioned in the iptables/netfilter source code, but a grep of the current source tarball in Rawhide doesn't find anything anymore. It would need a closer (or very close) look to find out whether anything is left. The file preambles/copyright notices don't give a hint. A lot of your arguments rely on notions of common sense, fair play and so on, which just isn't a good approach. Of course not, if you're aiming at perfection and indefeasibility. -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Thu, 12 Jul 2012 08:34:46 +0200, Nicolas Mailhot wrote: The Original post was simply letting everyone know that upstream changed their license. If you have an issue with that, they would be the ones to address it, not anyone here in Fedora land. Technically, if upstream bungled its relicencing, Fedora has no grounds to redistribute under the new licence and is committing fencing (or something similar, I don't know the exact English term) That's exactly the smartass comments I do not need in this thread. If there are specific concerns that the relicensing is illegal or has not been done painstakingly and under consideration of all previous and current copyright holders, either tell the project developer team or tell me what to do at the Fedora side. Even without a license change, there might be copyright infringement in any package redistributed by Fedora. Who knows? There are even license changes which don't get announced in accordance with the guidelines/policies. If you think this case is special or a precedent, it would be easy to retire the package and be done with it. I've explained in lengths my observation of how much the old source code has changed over the past years with regard to inherited pieces and previous contributions, the regular removal of entire files including their copyright notices, the major development and rewriting which got rid of a lot of old cruft, the appearance of new base developers who contributed work including copyright notices and compatible licensing terms, the mentioning of new patch authors in the credits, the existence of source files with the new licensing, and so on. As an observer of all those changes over a long time, I have no reason to believe that the licensing change has not been performed in a legally proper way. That's why people are concerned here (both at this exact incident and at the approach advocated for packaging legal checks) One person has raised concerns about whether his translation contributions may have been ignored. Meanwhile, the person has granted permission to keep his translations in the BSD licensed project. The question whether patch contributions are affected has not been examined or answered, at least not in this thread or the private one. All (most?) others in this thread have focused on legal generalization and the theoretical threat that a single copyright holder's related rights may have been ignored, even if it may be only a single line of possibly trivial code, and that the single copyright holder might turn against the project. -- Fedora release 17 (Beefy Miracle) - Linux 3.4.4-5.fc17.x86_64 loadavg: 0.11 0.35 0.43 -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Wed, 11 Jul 2012 06:57:21 +0200, Nicolas Mailhot wrote: Do you think a few more verdicts like that will influence small FLOSS projects? In that they will not apply proposed fixes faster, faster, faster, You complained no one here was a lawyer and any residual changes would be deemed not qualifying under copyright law. I questioned that. I didn't claim it. In particular, I questioned whether authors of one-line or tiny patches (and we still don't know what code changes are subject for discussion and whether they are still left), who explicitly offer this work to project authors for copying or as inspiration, would always expect full consideration of copyright and related rights for such a contribution. I questioned whether the code contributions may have been considered insignificant by *both* the creator and the project developers as to silently agree that no special or legally pedantic handling would be necessary, and giving credits in documentation would be a fair move and honest acknowledgement of the support and not due to legal requirements only (a contributor's right to be credited), with the contributor actually demanding to be credited. Audacious wouldn't be what it is without its core developers doing most of the work, and I think most external contributors understand that and accept that. The possibility that someone manages to get a [possibly tiny] patch copied into the project code base and tries to exploit the legal consequences [with perhaps hostile intentions] some time later is not much of interest to me in this particular discussion. There are other risks that are beyond this topic, such as someone copying verbatim from project B, submitting to project C, keeping secret about the contribution's origin. Meanwhile, there has been a clarification from an Audacious core developer via private mail to several participants in this thread, confirming the effort that has gone into trying to track down and contact everyone holding copyright on a piece of the Audacious source code. -- Fedora release 17 (Beefy Miracle) - Linux 3.4.4-5.fc17.x86_64 loadavg: 0.41 0.52 0.49 -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Tue, 2012-07-10 at 22:09 +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote: On Tue, 10 Jul 2012 21:33:26 +0200, Nicolas Mailhot wrote: Please consider that in the Oracle vs Google case, Oracle ended up with 9-line copying (plus a few test files), and the judge decided that *as* *a* *matter* *of* *law* copyright infringement had occurred for those 9 lines. http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120510205659643#1119 That's what a very smart judge decided in a huge trial with some of the countries top lawyers involved. I don't have any clear idea what is not substantial enough to qualify for copyright, but this very simple code did https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3940683 Do you think a few more verdicts like that will influence small FLOSS projects? In that they will not apply proposed fixes faster, faster, faster, http://www.i-programmer.info/news/193-android/4224-oracle-v-google-judge-is-a-programmer.html but will spend a bit more time on creating the fixes/code changes themselves? Such verdicts - which are nothing new - are why large F/OSS projects, including Fedora and the kernel, have strict attribution polices and/or contributor agreements. Why do you think we make contributors sign an agreement explicitly granting the project permission to re-license their code? Precisely to avoid situations like this. If you want to run a significant F/OSS project and take contributions from outside a very small and informally manageable circle, you _really_ need to have a strong attribution system and/or a contributor agreement in place. (Note, also, when I remember to, if I'm sending a patch to a small project which hasn't managed to institute such a thing, I usually try to include some kind of indication that I assign the copyright to the author or something along those lines, to try and help them avoid this kind of problem if they grow bigger and hit issues like this in the future...) -- Adam Williamson Fedora QA Community Monkey IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora http://www.happyassassin.net -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Wed, 2012-07-11 at 12:21 +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote: On Wed, 11 Jul 2012 06:57:21 +0200, Nicolas Mailhot wrote: Do you think a few more verdicts like that will influence small FLOSS projects? In that they will not apply proposed fixes faster, faster, faster, You complained no one here was a lawyer and any residual changes would be deemed not qualifying under copyright law. I questioned that. I didn't claim it. In particular, I questioned whether authors of one-line or tiny patches (and we still don't know what code changes are subject for discussion and whether they are still left), who explicitly offer this work to project authors for copying or as inspiration, would always expect full consideration of copyright and related rights for such a contribution. The problem is you're approaching things in exactly the wrong direction. Look at it this way: it's the *project* which is in the exposed, dangerous position, not the contributors. You're arguing it almost the opposite way. A lot of your arguments rely on notions of common sense, fair play and so on, which just isn't a good approach. To be specific: it _doesn't matter_ if 99.99% of all authors of one-line or tiny patches have no inclination to expect full consideration of copyright. If 0.01% of contributors do, then the project is in a very dangerous position if it does something to violate those contributors' rights. As several others posted: the point is that as a project that accepts contributions it's very legally dangerous to take the approach that everyone will act in good faith and be okay with you appropriating their (possible) copyright rights. Even if every one of your five hundred contributors _except one_ does this, that single one can pose you huge problems. As a project you have to take a defensive, paranoid posture and take steps to absolutely ensure that _no-one_ can _possibly_ challenge your actions in regards to their copyright rights. You don't want a single person to even _start_ any kind of challenge, because then you're already into expensive legal territory and you've lost. It doesn't matter if two years down the road, a judge would ultimately decide their contribution was trivial and not deserving of protection, because you're already out two years of lawyer fees. It's just too risky as a project to take it upon yourself to determine which contributions were significant or not. _Especially_ without reliable legal advice. No-one debating this with you is asserting, definitely, that you're wrong about any specific assessment of whether a particular contribution is subject to copyright protection. They don't have to say that for their position to be valid. I questioned whether the code contributions may have been considered insignificant by *both* the creator and the project developers as to silently agree that no special or legally pedantic handling would be necessary, It's extremely dangerous to simply assume such a silent agreement exists. How do you tell the situation where it does from the situation where it doesn't? What legal force does such a silent agreement have? (the answer is none.) and giving credits in documentation would be a fair move and honest acknowledgement of the support and not due to legal requirements only (a contributor's right to be credited), with the contributor actually demanding to be credited. Audacious wouldn't be what it is without its core developers doing most of the work, and I think most external contributors understand that and accept that. See above: it doesn't matter if _most_ external contributors understand and accept that. The project is in an exposed and dangerous position if _even one_ does not. The law isn't some kind of democracy - you can't show up in court and ask the judge to take a vote of contributors. Meanwhile, there has been a clarification from an Audacious core developer via private mail to several participants in this thread, confirming the effort that has gone into trying to track down and contact everyone holding copyright on a piece of the Audacious source code. That's exactly what's necessary - the project needs to contact anyone who might _possibly_ hold copyright. Not just anyone the project thinks, based on their judgement of the significance of their contribution, _actually does_ hold copyright, for the reasons stated above - the project has to err on the side of caution. I don't know the specifics of this case, but it seems from the initial response that started all this that the effort has missed at least one contributor of a translation. That's an excellent illustration of the point: as spot said, whether translations of apps are subject to copyright or not is _questionable_. It's _possible_ contributors of translations don't have copyright and couldn't object to the re-licensing. But on the other hand, it's possible they _do_ and _can_. It would be risky for the project to rely on a belief that they
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
...snip... Does this thread need to continue on this list? IMHO: If you have an issue, please contact the upstream developers and work it out. If you are unsure, please consult a lawyer. The Original post was simply letting everyone know that upstream changed their license. If you have an issue with that, they would be the ones to address it, not anyone here in Fedora land. kevin signature.asc Description: PGP signature -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Mon, 09 Jul 2012 15:30:50 -0400, Tom Callaway wrote: What if the main creators of the software prefer acknowledging substantial contributions with proper attribution and copyright notice in the file preambles? I don't think what the main creators decide to acknowledge (or not) has any legal bearing on the copyrightability of past contributions. (don't like the legal requirements of some work? just don't acknowledge it!) -- Nicolas Mailhot -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
Hi. On Mon, 9 Jul 2012 13:10:48 + (UTC), Petr Pisar wrote: How could they have changed the license without asking contributors? I have periodically translated the messages, I believe I have some patches there and nobody had asked me. I did get asked about some (rather trivial) functions I added to the core years ago, so there was an effort to do this. -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On 2012-07-09, Michael Schwendt mschwe...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, 9 Jul 2012 13:10:48 + (UTC), Petr Pisar wrote: As of 3.3-beta1, Audacious is now officially under a two-clause BSD license (previously GPLv3). Some plugins (separate package) are still under other licenses, however. How could they have changed the license without asking contributors? I have periodically translated the messages, I believe I have some patches there and nobody had asked me. Have you had your name and a copyright statement in any source file? Obviously not. I just remember some patches into plugins and they have been removed probably. To highlight that you've been the [primary] author of that file? If not, you're not a full/official author to have a stake in the licensing decision. I understand the practical point of view, but I cannot agree from the point of view of law. This aspect has been already discussed and I'm not going to dispute it more. I see your name in the cs.po file's list of translators. The header says This file is distributed under the same license as the Audacious package. Same for the plugins' translations, but those have never applied a single license. Because the translation is derived work of message template (*.pot file) which is itself compilation over all source files, each getting its own license. Each plugin applies an individual license. As with source code and no accurate attribution, one would need to figure out who of the multiple translators contributed what portions of the translation. Not really feasible, IMO. Yes, but the question here are the translators rights which are, at least in my case, declared clearly in the header of cs/po.cs and also visible in git log of the project: # Petr Písař petr.pi...@atlas.cz, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012. I believe five years of creative work is significant portion of the deal to bother project leader to ask translators for permission to change the license terms. In spot of the declaration of another contributor in this threat I think Audacious upstream tracked the C code authors but ommited the translators. (Actually I do not wonder. In recent past, it was difficult to get my updates to upstream, the developers were ignoring my bug reports about out-dated po/POTFILES.in which got the whole project translation effort into deep limb. Audacious developers got tired of the internationalization probably, and they moved the translations to Lunchpad which effectively killed my interrest in translating this project any more. Changing the license to BSD while overlooking translators just confirms their ingorance in this field.) If you think you've got a stake in the licensing decision, you would need to talk to the core developers. My request for a License clarification can be found in the new bug tracker: http://redmine.audacious-media-player.org/issues/46 Thanks for the link. I will give them few sentences. -- Petr -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Tue, 10 Jul 2012 08:00:50 +0200, Nicolas Mailhot wrote: On Mon, 09 Jul 2012 15:30:50 -0400, Tom Callaway wrote: What if the main creators of the software prefer acknowledging substantial contributions with proper attribution and copyright notice in the file preambles? I don't think what the main creators decide to acknowledge (or not) has any legal bearing on the copyrightability of past contributions. (don't like the legal requirements of some work? just don't acknowledge it!) Uh, come on, no smartass comments in this thread! :-( A little bit of familiarity with the development of Audacious (not the plugins!) is necessary, or else the thread will focus on general things that don't really apply. Years ago, the software had started as a fork of BMP, which itself had been a fork of XMMS. Not only one could find copies of the old list of authors shipped with the new project releases, copyright notices were present in (many?) inherited files, too. Either referring to individuals or some team name. While working on the source code, the new team has continued to maintain copyright notices but has also introduced new files with different albeit compatible licensing. Eventually, old code for the base software has been replaced/removed completely, and together with deleting files or changing their content 100%, the copyright notices have been replaced, too. I consider it likely and plausible that so much has changed, not much old stuff is left anymore (and this is what the current development team believes, too, according to a history section in the most recent AUTHORS file). Some patch authors are still credited, others may have contributed to BSD licensed project files before. Only they can tell, and only the current main developers can tell the full story. This may be another chance for smartasses to jump in with general legal pedantry, but I don't consider that helpful. -- Fedora release 17 (Beefy Miracle) - Linux 3.4.4-5.fc17.x86_64 loadavg: 0.64 0.62 0.39 -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Tue, 10 Jul 2012 09:03:02 + (UTC), Petr Pisar wrote: Have you had your name and a copyright statement in any source file? Obviously not. I just remember some patches into plugins and they have been removed probably. The plugins are a different source package and a different Fedora package, too. This thread is about the base player. (Actually I do not wonder. In recent past, it was difficult to get my updates to upstream, the developers were ignoring my bug reports about out-dated po/POTFILES.in which got the whole project translation effort into deep limb. This list is the wrong place to complain about that. The bug tracker has changed end of 2011, but they have been quick in responding to tickets. Audacious developers got tired of the internationalization probably, and they moved the translations to Lunchpad which effectively killed my interrest in translating this project any more. I think they've moved to using Transifex. -- Fedora release 17 (Beefy Miracle) - Linux 3.4.4-5.fc17.x86_64 loadavg: 0.38 0.37 0.43 -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Mon, 2012-07-09 at 15:30 -0400, Tom Callaway wrote: On 07/09/2012 03:21 PM, Matthew Garrett wrote: and arbitrary other people, who get their patch contributions merged, don't gain any copyright protection on the file or the proper parts of it, I don't think this is true. Agreed. It is my opinion that this is not the case, assuming that the changes are substantial enough to be copyrightable. I'm otherwise refraining from comment on this thread, because it is unclear as to whether translations are copyrightable or not. Translated books are certainly copyrightable and have a separate copyright than the original, I do not see why translations of programs should not assuming entire phrases are translated and not single terms. Simo. -- Simo Sorce * Red Hat, Inc * New York -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On 07/10/2012 07:06 AM, Simo Sorce wrote: On Mon, 2012-07-09 at 15:30 -0400, Tom Callaway wrote: On 07/09/2012 03:21 PM, Matthew Garrett wrote: and arbitrary other people, who get their patch contributions merged, don't gain any copyright protection on the file or the proper parts of it, I don't think this is true. Agreed. It is my opinion that this is not the case, assuming that the changes are substantial enough to be copyrightable. I'm otherwise refraining from comment on this thread, because it is unclear as to whether translations are copyrightable or not. Translated books are certainly copyrightable and have a separate copyright than the original, I do not see why translations of programs should not assuming entire phrases are translated and not single terms. I'm not taking sides on this issue, merely pointing out that it is unclear. ~tom == Fedora Project -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On 07/10/2012 05:22 AM, Michael Schwendt wrote: This may be another chance for smartasses to jump in with general legal pedantry, but I don't consider that helpful. All accurate legal interpretations are essentially pedantry. What I don't consider helpful is making broad generalizations about legal issues. Copyright doesn't fail to exist because it isn't attributed. Yes, the copyright situation on a long-lived FOSS project like Audacious is rather complicated. ~tom == Fedora Project -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Tue, 10 Jul 2012 08:57:52 -0400, Tom Callaway wrote: On 07/10/2012 05:22 AM, Michael Schwendt wrote: This may be another chance for smartasses to jump in with general legal pedantry, but I don't consider that helpful. All accurate legal interpretations are essentially pedantry. This mailing-list is impressive at times. Not! :-/ Pedantry alone wouldn't be a bad thing. Lack of accuracy is what makes it bad. Combine pedantry with accuracy, and this thread may become helpful. But instead, there is a lot of speculation and assumptions, and rose-coloured glasses are involved, too. And no IANAL disclaimers seen anywhere. If you really want to contribute accurate legal interpretations, let's discuss a specific scenario/case. What I don't consider helpful is making broad generalizations about legal issues. Copyright doesn't fail to exist because it isn't attributed. That's a generalization. And a dangerous one. In particular, since we would first need to discuss what requirements a creation must meet to qualify for copyright. That alone is not a simple topic. Also, imagine that both a main developer [of a project] and a patch contributor own copyright on an almost identical work they've created. Such as a code change that involves more than touching a single line, but which may still lead to duplication or high similarity, because multiple people have worked on the same problem coincidentally. If the patch author decides to offer his work to the project, nothing forces the project developer to copy [or adapt] the patch instead of applying the own work, which may be *very* similar or even equal (if it comes to small code changes). One would need to examine the final code changes in detail to decide whether any copying of copyrighted work has been involved and whether that could have been avoided. It boils down to some forms of etiquette, whether and when main project developers recognize contributed patches as substantial and automatically give proper credits *before* a copyright holder wants to enforce rights. It shouldn't be too much to ask for that a contributor explicitly points out what the main developers are expected to do (such as giving credits, adding names to copyright notices, e.g.) when copying or adapting a patch or only parts of it, even if they may just do that to save some time. It could be that more patches would be rejected because they would not be considered substantial enough and not applicable to copyright. There's the loop again. ;) Yes, the copyright situation on a long-lived FOSS project like Audacious is rather complicated. +1 That sounds reasonable. -- Fedora release 17 (Beefy Miracle) - Linux 3.4.4-5.fc17.x86_64 loadavg: 0.29 0.34 0.34 -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 04:21:12PM +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote: Pedantry alone wouldn't be a bad thing. Lack of accuracy is what makes it bad. Combine pedantry with accuracy, and this thread may become helpful. But instead, there is a lot of speculation and assumptions, and rose-coloured glasses are involved, too. And no IANAL disclaimers seen anywhere. Saying things like: and arbitrary other people, who get their patch contributions merged, don't gain any copyright protection on the file or the proper parts of it, is inaccurate and dangerous. It's entirely appropriate to indicate that it's untrue. What I don't consider helpful is making broad generalizations about legal issues. Copyright doesn't fail to exist because it isn't attributed. That's a generalization. And a dangerous one. In particular, since we would first need to discuss what requirements a creation must meet to qualify for copyright. That alone is not a simple topic. No we don't. A lack of attribution does not result in copyright failing to exist. The work not being copyrightable in the first place may result in copyright failing to exist, but that has nothing to do with attribution. It boils down to some forms of etiquette, whether and when main project developers recognize contributed patches as substantial and automatically give proper credits *before* a copyright holder wants to enforce rights. It boils down to copyright law. Nothing more. Nothing less. Project maintainers simply don't get to make that choice on behalf of others. -- Matthew Garrett | mj...@srcf.ucam.org -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Tue, 10 Jul 2012 15:57:31 +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: Saying things like: and arbitrary other people, who get their patch contributions merged, don't gain any copyright protection on the file or the proper parts of it, is inaccurate and dangerous. It's entirely appropriate to indicate that it's untrue. I wrote that in the context of files giving credit to *some* people [*], which could (!) be an indication that any _unknown_ changes, which other people may have managed to get included in those files, likely have not been considered substantial enough to qualify for copyright. It could even be that the submitters did not consider the patches substantial enough themselves. That's speculation, I don't like it. But it has been only a question to Petr, because there are lots of files in Audacious that give credit. I've never asked to be credited but have been mentioned nevertheless, and I can only guess what work has been recognized. I would not claim rights on tiny patches and bug-fixes another developer could come up with, too, even if a copyright law pedant would claim that I could. [*] Those people believe they do most of the original work to qualify for copyright. It boils down to some forms of etiquette, whether and when main project developers recognize contributed patches as substantial and automatically give proper credits *before* a copyright holder wants to enforce rights. It boils down to copyright law. Nothing more. Nothing less. Project maintainers simply don't get to make that choice on behalf of others. Sure they do. We can go on endlessly. They can reject copying something verbatim, and they may change the code nevertheless in either the same or a very similar way. Coincidentally or because it's an obvious way (and no patented stuf, hey!). Then somebody else would need to decide whether copyright law is applicable. -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 05:45:15PM +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote: On Tue, 10 Jul 2012 15:57:31 +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: Saying things like: and arbitrary other people, who get their patch contributions merged, don't gain any copyright protection on the file or the proper parts of it, is inaccurate and dangerous. It's entirely appropriate to indicate that it's untrue. I wrote that in the context of files giving credit to *some* people [*], which could (!) be an indication that any _unknown_ changes, which other people may have managed to get included in those files, likely have not been considered substantial enough to qualify for copyright. Which is a dangerous position to take. Don't say things like that. -- Matthew Garrett | mj...@srcf.ucam.org -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Tue, 10 Jul 2012 16:52:19 +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 05:45:15PM +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote: On Tue, 10 Jul 2012 15:57:31 +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: Saying things like: and arbitrary other people, who get their patch contributions merged, don't gain any copyright protection on the file or the proper parts of it, is inaccurate and dangerous. It's entirely appropriate to indicate that it's untrue. I wrote that in the context of files giving credit to *some* people [*], which could (!) be an indication that any _unknown_ changes, which other people may have managed to get included in those files, likely have not been considered substantial enough to qualify for copyright. Which is a dangerous position to take. Don't say things like that. I'd love to take advice from you, but with your overly brief comments you're unconvincing. I don't think copyright law is as simple as to cover it with one-line mails. -- Fedora release 17 (Beefy Miracle) - Linux 3.4.4-5.fc17.x86_64 loadavg: 0.54 0.68 0.55 -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 11:45 AM, Michael Schwendt mschwe...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, 10 Jul 2012 15:57:31 +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: Saying things like: and arbitrary other people, who get their patch contributions merged, don't gain any copyright protection on the file or the proper parts of it, is inaccurate and dangerous. It's entirely appropriate to indicate that it's untrue. I wrote that in the context of files giving credit to *some* people [*], which could (!) be an indication that any _unknown_ changes, which other people may have managed to get included in those files, likely have not been considered substantial enough to qualify for copyright. Michael, please stop with this. Copyright is automatic under Berne. Whether it qualifies is not up to people deciding whether unknown contributors' contributions are substantial enough. You're describing an entirely impractical mode of approach. Whatever some group of recognized contributors might think, any contributor can bring suit because their code is included. The way to go about it is to recognize it, not constantly try to rationalize a bizarre notion where you get to decide it. Making the determinations you keep bringing up, even in court, is not a very clear legal matter. Just recognize the point -- people who contribute code to a GPL'd project (or any project) automatically have a copyright claim, and you work on that basis, just like any other project contemplating changing their license does. Seth It could even be that the submitters did not consider the patches substantial enough themselves. That's speculation, I don't like it. But it has been only a question to Petr, because there are lots of files in Audacious that give credit. I've never asked to be credited but have been mentioned nevertheless, and I can only guess what work has been recognized. I would not claim rights on tiny patches and bug-fixes another developer could come up with, too, even if a copyright law pedant would claim that I could. [*] Those people believe they do most of the original work to qualify for copyright. It boils down to some forms of etiquette, whether and when main project developers recognize contributed patches as substantial and automatically give proper credits *before* a copyright holder wants to enforce rights. It boils down to copyright law. Nothing more. Nothing less. Project maintainers simply don't get to make that choice on behalf of others. Sure they do. We can go on endlessly. They can reject copying something verbatim, and they may change the code nevertheless in either the same or a very similar way. Coincidentally or because it's an obvious way (and no patented stuf, hey!). Then somebody else would need to decide whether copyright law is applicable. -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Tue, 10 Jul 2012 13:19:09 -0400, Seth Johnson wrote: Copyright is automatic under Berne. Which only means that you don't need to apply for copyright at any government office. But copyright on _what_? What comprises a copyright work? Single words? Single lines of code? Trivial/obvious code fragments some other person who have added at some other point of time? Or more original work only? people who contribute code to a GPL'd project (or any project) automatically have a copyright claim, And we still don't know what has been contributed, if at all. And what licensing terms were applied to the file the person contributed to. The project this thread refers to has used different licenses for a long time already. Hey Audacious developers, here's a patch for a missing return 1; in libaudcore, and now that you've seen my patch, if you merge that line of code, I claim my rights. -- Fedora release 17 (Beefy Miracle) - Linux 3.4.4-5.fc17.x86_64 loadavg: 0.27 0.20 0.15 -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On 07/10/2012 11:05 AM, Michael Schwendt wrote: On Tue, 10 Jul 2012 13:19:09 -0400, Seth Johnson wrote: Copyright is automatic under Berne. Which only means that you don't need to apply for copyright at any government office. But copyright on _what_? What comprises a copyright work? Single words? Single lines of code? Trivial/obvious code fragments some other person who have added at some other point of time? Or more original work only? That's a great question. people who contribute code to a GPL'd project (or any project) automatically have a copyright claim, And we still don't know what has been contributed, if at all. And what licensing terms were applied to the file the person contributed to. The project this thread refers to has used different licenses for a long time already. Hey Audacious developers, here's a patch for a missing return 1; in libaudcore, and now that you've seen my patch, if you merge that line of code, I claim my rights. Yep, good example. What is the threshold? There is only 1 person who can answer that authoritatively: The judge who ends up presiding over the court case where it's formally asked. Everything else is opinion. Some of it informed: attorneys, some of it educated guessing (devoted groklaw readers), some of it blindingly ignorant. Wherever each member of de...@l.fpo falls on that spectrum, the odds are they shouldn't be giving legal advice because there's only 1 judge and none of us are they. -- Brendan Conoboy / Red Hat, Inc. / b...@redhat.com -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Tue, 2012-07-10 at 20:05 +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote: On Tue, 10 Jul 2012 13:19:09 -0400, Seth Johnson wrote: Copyright is automatic under Berne. Which only means that you don't need to apply for copyright at any government office. But copyright on _what_? What comprises a copyright work? Single words? Single lines of code? Trivial/obvious code fragments some other person who have added at some other point of time? Or more original work only? people who contribute code to a GPL'd project (or any project) automatically have a copyright claim, And we still don't know what has been contributed, if at all. And what licensing terms were applied to the file the person contributed to. The project this thread refers to has used different licenses for a long time already. Hey Audacious developers, here's a patch for a missing return 1; in libaudcore, and now that you've seen my patch, if you merge that line of code, I claim my rights. Can you stop the useless hyperbole ? The reason why nobody is telling you a hard rule is that there are no hard rules, but often it will be decided on case by case basis. So when re-licensing you have to be paranoid but most importantly do it with the support of a lawyer that knows how to minimize ill effects should someone later decide you did something wrong. That's all was really on the table I think, all people really *can* say is that you cannot assume much about who can claims copyright until you analyze the specific contribution. This is one reason why some people insist in pretending you to surrender any copyright to the project owner when you contribute code. In general if you are doing things in good faith everything will work fine in the end. Just don't try to be casual when addressing the matter as it is not something to underestimate like you seem to be doing. Simo. -- Simo Sorce * Red Hat, Inc * New York -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Tue, 10 Jul 2012 14:20:32 -0400, Simo Sorce wrote: Can you stop the useless hyperbole ? Sure, can the useless generalization and pedantry stop, too? The reason why nobody is telling you a hard rule is that there are no hard rules, but often it will be decided on case by case basis. Hence my initial question on what contribution we talk about? And on possible reasons why there have been no credits anywhere at all. My interest was in the code/patch contribution only, as the translation work has been given credit for. So when re-licensing you have to be paranoid but most importantly do it with the support of a lawyer that knows how to minimize ill effects should someone later decide you did something wrong. Oh, legal advice. How many small and losely organized FLOSS projects with no commercial backing consult a lawyer when they relicence or merge code from other projects? That's all was really on the table I think, all people really *can* say is that you cannot assume much about who can claims copyright until you analyze the specific contribution. This is one reason why some people insist in pretending you to surrender any copyright to the project owner when you contribute code. Yes, please, can we analyze specific contributions? I've pointed out more than once that many files have been replaced or deleted, which increases the chance that old(er) contributions and inherited code sections are not left anymore. In general if you are doing things in good faith everything will work fine in the end. Just don't try to be casual when addressing the matter as it is not something to underestimate like you seem to be doing. Not clear what you think I underestimate. -- Fedora release 17 (Beefy Miracle) - Linux 3.4.4-5.fc17.x86_64 loadavg: 0.09 0.24 0.38 -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Tue, 10 Jul 2012 16:52:19 +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 05:45:15PM +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote: On Tue, 10 Jul 2012 15:57:31 +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: I wrote that in the context of files giving credit to *some* people [*], which could (!) be an indication that any _unknown_ changes, which other people may have managed to get included in those files, likely have not been considered substantial enough to qualify for copyright. Which is a dangerous position to take. Don't say things like that. I'd love to take advice from you, but with your overly brief comments you're unconvincing. I don't think copyright law is as simple as to cover it with one-line mails. Please consider that in the Oracle vs Google case, Oracle ended up with 9-line copying (plus a few test files), and the judge decided that *as* *a* *matter* *of* *law* copyright infringement had occurred for those 9 lines. http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120510205659643#1119 That's what a very smart judge decided in a huge trial with some of the countries top lawyers involved. I don't have any clear idea what is not substantial enough to qualify for copyright, but this very simple code did https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3940683 -- Nicolas Mailhot -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 3:33 PM, Nicolas Mailhot nicolas.mail...@laposte.net wrote: Please consider that in the Oracle vs Google case, Oracle ended up with 9-line copying (plus a few test files), and the judge decided that *as* *a* *matter* *of* *law* copyright infringement had occurred for those 9 lines. Yes. And also told Oracle that it was very limited what they could claim as damage caused by the copyright infringement over those 9 lines. Yes, those 9 lines belong to you my precious butterfly. No, they are not significant and this is all a waste of time. m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- Software Architect - OLPC - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 3:48 PM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: Yes. And also told Oracle that it was very limited what they could claim as damage caused by the copyright infringement over those 9 lines. Very limited in the context of billion dollar lawsuits. Statutory infringement for commercial use makes any infringement a potentially non-trivial at the level of mere mortals. Besides, the damages are generally irrelevant the FUD and disruption are the real costs. The only litigation that ends up in front of a judge are where one or both parties is either crazy or a fool. Everyone else settles. But this is a silly discussion. There is substantial jurisdictional differences on the bar of copyrightability, and because there are basically no useful bright lines the details are basically not worth discussing. The point is that being cautious and conservative is a very good policy and about the only one which can be sanely advocated. If someone's contributions are really insignificant then it's no big deal to replace them if they're being unfriendly and are unwilling to go along with a re-licensing. It may be a bit of a pain, but it's much less of a pain than.. this discussion not to mention the pain of a potential legal dispute. And no, re-licensing a many-authored project isn't simply fun or easy. This is also a reason why projects should practice good hygiene upfront, and checking up on this— and propagating best practices— is one of the services a packager can provide to their upstreams. -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 03:48:52PM -0400, Martin Langhoff wrote: On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 3:33 PM, Nicolas Mailhot nicolas.mail...@laposte.net wrote: Please consider that in the Oracle vs Google case, Oracle ended up with 9-line copying (plus a few test files), and the judge decided that *as* *a* *matter* *of* *law* copyright infringement had occurred for those 9 lines. Yes. And also told Oracle that it was very limited what they could claim as damage caused by the copyright infringement over those 9 lines. Yes, those 9 lines belong to you my precious butterfly. No, they are not significant and this is all a waste of time. But Google are not permitted to redistribute that code. If a work is relicensed without the assent of all copyright holders then the work is undistributable, no matter how small any damages might be. -- Matthew Garrett | mj...@srcf.ucam.org -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Tue, 10 Jul 2012 21:33:26 +0200, Nicolas Mailhot wrote: Please consider that in the Oracle vs Google case, Oracle ended up with 9-line copying (plus a few test files), and the judge decided that *as* *a* *matter* *of* *law* copyright infringement had occurred for those 9 lines. http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120510205659643#1119 That's what a very smart judge decided in a huge trial with some of the countries top lawyers involved. I don't have any clear idea what is not substantial enough to qualify for copyright, but this very simple code did https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3940683 Do you think a few more verdicts like that will influence small FLOSS projects? In that they will not apply proposed fixes faster, faster, faster, http://www.i-programmer.info/news/193-android/4224-oracle-v-google-judge-is-a-programmer.html but will spend a bit more time on creating the fixes/code changes themselves? -- Fedora release 17 (Beefy Miracle) - Linux 3.4.4-5.fc17.x86_64 loadavg: 0.33 0.26 0.41 -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 3:33 PM, Nicolas Mailhot nicolas.mail...@laposte.net wrote: Please consider that in the Oracle vs Google case, Oracle ended up with 9-line copying (plus a few test files), and the judge decided that *as* *a* *matter* *of* *law* copyright infringement had occurred for those 9 lines. Yes. And also told Oracle that it was very limited what they could claim as damage caused by the copyright infringement over those 9 lines. He told them they could claim 15$ for those IIRC. That's pocket change for Oracle and Google but not for your average free software project. -- Nicolas Mailhot -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Tue, 10 Jul 2012 21:33:26 +0200, Nicolas Mailhot wrote: Please consider that in the Oracle vs Google case, Oracle ended up with 9-line copying (plus a few test files), and the judge decided that *as* *a* *matter* *of* *law* copyright infringement had occurred for those 9 lines. http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120510205659643#1119 That's what a very smart judge decided in a huge trial with some of the countries top lawyers involved. I don't have any clear idea what is not substantial enough to qualify for copyright, but this very simple code did https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3940683 Do you think a few more verdicts like that will influence small FLOSS projects? In that they will not apply proposed fixes faster, faster, faster, You complained no one here was a lawyer and any residual changes would be deemed not qualifying under copyright law. I posted a reference to a very recent judgement where a very good lawyer tried to argue the same for nine very simple code lines over a code corpus that dwarfs audacious (not qualifying seems to be written de minimis in american lawyer speek) and a very good judge refused the argument. If that's not good enough for you as authoritative reference I don't know what could be. -- Nicolas Mailhot -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On 2012-07-05, Michael Schwendt mschwe...@gmail.com wrote: As of 3.3-beta1, Audacious is now officially under a two-clause BSD license (previously GPLv3). Some plugins (separate package) are still under other licenses, however. How could they have changed the license without asking contributors? I have periodically translated the messages, I believe I have some patches there and nobody had asked me. -- Petr -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Mon, 9 Jul 2012 13:10:48 + (UTC), Petr Pisar wrote: As of 3.3-beta1, Audacious is now officially under a two-clause BSD license (previously GPLv3). Some plugins (separate package) are still under other licenses, however. How could they have changed the license without asking contributors? I have periodically translated the messages, I believe I have some patches there and nobody had asked me. Have you had your name and a copyright statement in any source file? To highlight that you've been the [primary] author of that file? If not, you're not a full/official author to have a stake in the licensing decision. There have been major changes to the source code all the time, including new preambles for heavily rewritten files. From what I can see it's been very difficult to keep track of who had created what portions of the code, and hardly any inherited code (from BMP, XMMS and friends) is left either. The file src/audacious/credits.c has been more up-to-date than the aging file AUTHORS, too, and neither one was accurate enough to tell who of the Patch authors contributed what and whether the contributed code is still included and whether a core developer would have contributed the same code if an external patch contributor had not done it. You're not listed as a patch author in Audacious 3.2.4 (in the Credits, from the credits.c file that is gone in the latest release). I see your name in the cs.po file's list of translators. The header says This file is distributed under the same license as the Audacious package. Same for the plugins' translations, but those have never applied a single license. Each plugin applies an individual license. As with source code and no accurate attribution, one would need to figure out who of the multiple translators contributed what portions of the translation. Not really feasible, IMO. If you think you've got a stake in the licensing decision, you would need to talk to the core developers. My request for a License clarification can be found in the new bug tracker: http://redmine.audacious-media-player.org/issues/46 -- Fedora release 17 (Beefy Miracle) - Linux 3.4.4-5.fc17.x86_64 loadavg: 1.10 0.94 0.69 -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
For a point of accuracy— On Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 12:10 PM, Michael Schwendt mschwe...@gmail.com wrote: Have you had your name and a copyright statement in any source file? To highlight that you've been the [primary] author of that file? If not, you're not a full/official author to have a stake in the licensing decision. This is a bogus theory of law here. No Berne signatory nation may require any notice or registration to enjoy the protection of copyright. That someone's name wasn't listed in the right places may _explain_ their non-inclusion in a copyright change discussion, but it doesn't make it justifiable or lawful. Perhaps his contributions were too insignificant to earn copyright coverage, or at least too insignificant to make blockading a licensing change by the other developers an ethical move, or perhaps they were all removed as part of the process or through code churn, but none of that has much to do with where an author's name is listed. -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 2:17 PM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: That someone's name wasn't listed in the right places may _explain_ their non-inclusion in a copyright change discussion That seems to be what is being stated. Perhaps his contributions were too insignificant to earn copyright coverage, or at least too insignificant to make blockading a licensing change And that seems quite possible. Seems sensible and civilized to not get too nitpicky, unless you are a major contributor to a project. m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- Software Architect - OLPC - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Mon, 9 Jul 2012 14:17:09 -0400, Gregory Maxwell wrote: For a point of accuracy— Or not. ;-) On Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 12:10 PM, Michael Schwendt wrote: Have you had your name and a copyright statement in any source file? To highlight that you've been the [primary] author of that file? If not, you're not a full/official author to have a stake in the licensing decision. This is a bogus theory of law here. No Berne signatory nation may require any notice or registration to enjoy the protection of copyright. Is that what was claimed? - No. Copyright Law can be more difficult if copyright notices are missing or if a different copyright holder is explicitly listed while (sporadic?) contributors are not. In this case, it's source code files [mostly] written [and maintained] by somebody else, with a preamble [and copyright notice] such as | file.c | Copyright 2011 Some Other Person's Name | | This file is part of Audacious. | | Licensing terms […] and arbitrary other people, who get their patch contributions merged, don't gain any copyright protection on the file or the proper parts of it, and the lack of attribution in the copyright notice makes it very easy to forget/ignore/disregard who may have committed a substantial part of the file. That someone's name wasn't listed in the right places may _explain_ their non-inclusion in a copyright change discussion, but it doesn't make it justifiable or lawful. Perhaps his contributions were too insignificant to earn copyright coverage, or at least too insignificant to make blockading a licensing change by the other developers an ethical move, or perhaps they were all removed as part of the process or through code churn, but none of that has much to do with where an author's name is listed. Which is just different words for what I've written earlier, isn't it? -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Mon, Jul 09, 2012 at 09:17:02PM +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote: and arbitrary other people, who get their patch contributions merged, don't gain any copyright protection on the file or the proper parts of it, I don't think this is true. -- Matthew Garrett | mj...@srcf.ucam.org -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On 07/09/2012 03:21 PM, Matthew Garrett wrote: and arbitrary other people, who get their patch contributions merged, don't gain any copyright protection on the file or the proper parts of it, I don't think this is true. Agreed. It is my opinion that this is not the case, assuming that the changes are substantial enough to be copyrightable. I'm otherwise refraining from comment on this thread, because it is unclear as to whether translations are copyrightable or not. ~tom == Fedora Project -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 3:17 PM, Michael Schwendt mschwe...@gmail.com wrote: and arbitrary other people, who get their patch contributions merged, don't gain any copyright protection on the file or the proper parts of it, This is not true, and it's the point I was responding to correct. (I consulted an attorney specializing in US copyright before posting my message as well, which was why there was a multi-hour gap between your message and mine. I point this out not as proof that what I'm saying is correct but to make it clear that my response wasn't just casual navel gazing. It sounded like you were advocating an understanding which was inconsistent with the law, and your follow-up appears to confirm that I wasn't misunderstanding that much) It's certainly possible for contributions to be so minor that they gain no copyright. But this determination can be complicated and fact specific. Certainly the dividing line is not one of updating the copyright headers. and the lack of attribution in the copyright notice makes it very easy to forget/ignore/disregard who may have committed a substantial part of the file. Absolutely. It makes it easy to do the right thing and so its a best practice to make sure all the names get listed, and its an understandable and forgivable mistake when someone unlisted gets forgotten. But it doesn't make it appropriate or lawful to change the licensing without the consent the relevant copyright holders, even if they aren't listed, such errors need to be corrected when discovered. (At least if the forgotten people are actually copyright holders, and that depends on a lot of details which I'm not aware of for this case) -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Mon, 9 Jul 2012 20:21:02 +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: On Mon, Jul 09, 2012 at 09:17:02PM +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote: and arbitrary other people, who get their patch contributions merged, don't gain any copyright protection on the file or the proper parts of it, I don't think this is true. Without proper attribution, e.g. in a commit message [of the merge done by a _different_ person] or in the preamble or inline, without a contributor explicitly requesting to be credited _anywhere at all_, how to keep track of the individual copyright holders who actually do want to keep their copyright related rights? How to distinguish from [patch] contributors, who don't care and who don't request credits and a copyright notice to be added to the file? Anyway, you might want to talk to the Audacious developers as well as a lawyer. It might boil down to the [patch] contributor having to explicitly waive their rights when submitting their work to avoid a misunderstanding. And that might be considered legal pedantry. -- Fedora release 17 (Beefy Miracle) - Linux 3.4.4-5.fc17.x86_64 loadavg: 0.51 0.69 0.73 -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Mon, Jul 09, 2012 at 09:47:40PM +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote: Without proper attribution, e.g. in a commit message [of the merge done by a _different_ person] or in the preamble or inline, without a contributor explicitly requesting to be credited _anywhere at all_, how to keep track of the individual copyright holders who actually do want to keep their copyright related rights? How to distinguish from [patch] contributors, who don't care and who don't request credits and a copyright notice to be added to the file? Revision control or some sort of out-of-band tracking. It's the project's responsibility, not the copyright holder's. -- Matthew Garrett | mj...@srcf.ucam.org -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Mon, 9 Jul 2012 15:36:25 -0400, Gregory Maxwell wrote: It's certainly possible for contributions to be so minor that they gain no copyright. I _do_ _not_ _know_ about what level of contributions we talk to. Whether they have been one-line fixes of bugs or typos, dozens of lines, or even entire files. With more than minor contributions, typically the contributed work is credited/honoured appropriately, either by listing a contributor as a project developer or with proper attributions in the files or the documentation. However, often one proposes a patch, and a developer doesn't _copy_ it verbatim, but applies something similar. I'm really not interested in legal pedantry that any contributor, who managed to get a few lines of code copied by the project developers, might return years later with an interest in defending copyright. But this determination can be complicated and fact specific. Certainly the dividing line is not one of updating the copyright headers. Hence I pointed out that a general problem has been to keep track of who contributed what and whether previous contributions are still found in the code. If they are not found in the code anymore (or not substantial enough anymore), there is nothing left for past copyright holders to claim. -- Fedora release 17 (Beefy Miracle) - Linux 3.4.4-5.fc17.x86_64 loadavg: 0.13 0.47 0.58 -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Mon, 9 Jul 2012 20:52:23 +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: On Mon, Jul 09, 2012 at 09:47:40PM +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote: Without proper attribution, e.g. in a commit message [of the merge done by a _different_ person] or in the preamble or inline, without a contributor explicitly requesting to be credited _anywhere at all_, how to keep track of the individual copyright holders who actually do want to keep their copyright related rights? How to distinguish from [patch] contributors, who don't care and who don't request credits and a copyright notice to be added to the file? Revision control or some sort of out-of-band tracking. It's the project's responsibility, not the copyright holder's. That's hardly feasible and not accurate enough either (if it comes to line numbers, changing the RC software, importing from source tarball for a forked project, tracking down when lines get removed or replaced, …). For any code modification, the committer would need to check whether he's about to remove an external person's contribution and then drop that person from the list of copyright holders. [insert Impossible Mission title music here] Inline comments do exist for a very good reason, in particular if the file header contains a copyright notice for the developer of the project and not the contributor(s). And any serious contributor ought to be explicit about whether and where he wants to be credited. The devs explicitly offered me commit access, and it would have been up to me to negotiate changes to copyright notices for work I consider substantial, or to stop contributing because of legal concerns. Patch contributors are free to include changes of existing copyright notices in their patches. -- Fedora release 17 (Beefy Miracle) - Linux 3.4.4-5.fc17.x86_64 loadavg: 0.32 0.51 0.53 -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Mon, 09 Jul 2012 15:30:50 -0400, Tom Callaway wrote: On 07/09/2012 03:21 PM, Matthew Garrett wrote: and arbitrary other people, who get their patch contributions merged, don't gain any copyright protection on the file or the proper parts of it, I don't think this is true. Agreed. It is my opinion that this is not the case, assuming that the changes are substantial enough to be copyrightable. And if your assumption is wrong? What if the main creators of the software prefer acknowledging substantial contributions with proper attribution and copyright notice in the file preambles? They do list different names in different files, and there are only few authors who do most of the development. They've kept a separate list of patch authors, but many patches may not be considered substantial enough to put a submitter onto that list. In my first reply in this thread I've pointed out that Petr is not credited for patches. I'm otherwise refraining from comment on this thread, because it is unclear as to whether translations are copyrightable or not. As with many ordinary patches, once you've seen the solution (here the translation), it would be more difficult to do it differently (to translate it differently). As with many patches (they might be straight-forward even), it's like first-come-first-served for a translator to be the first one to do the work. Perhaps nobody else would have volunteered to do the translation, but who knows? Anybody else might have come up with the same or very similar translation. Same for authors of patches, especially those of trivial ones (not limited to bug-fixes where a developer likely would have come up with exactly the same or a very similar code change). Going in circles if we extend it to substantial enough contributions and the contributor not reminding the main developers to give credits. -- Fedora release 17 (Beefy Miracle) - Linux 3.4.4-5.fc17.x86_64 loadavg: 0.18 0.17 0.31 -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
You need to get the permission of everyone who contributed code to the GPL'd codebase, to convert to the BSD license. Not sure I can comment on translations. It's far easier to convert from BSD to GPL, specifically because the BSD is so permissive. One theoretically supposes somebody might have contributed a snippet of code so minimal as not to constitute original expression, but people don't really want to go into those considerations when they contemplate converting from one code license to another. The GPL is really for keeping code from being casually converted to other licenses. Seth On Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 3:30 PM, Tom Callaway tcall...@redhat.com wrote: On 07/09/2012 03:21 PM, Matthew Garrett wrote: and arbitrary other people, who get their patch contributions merged, don't gain any copyright protection on the file or the proper parts of it, I don't think this is true. Agreed. It is my opinion that this is not the case, assuming that the changes are substantial enough to be copyrightable. I'm otherwise refraining from comment on this thread, because it is unclear as to whether translations are copyrightable or not. ~tom == Fedora Project -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 01:36:14AM +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote: What if the main creators of the software prefer acknowledging substantial contributions with proper attribution and copyright notice in the file preambles? They do list different names in different files, and there are only few authors who do most of the development. They've kept a separate list of patch authors, but many patches may not be considered substantial enough to put a submitter onto that list. In my first reply in this thread I've pointed out that Petr is not credited for patches. Determining whether a work is sufficiently substantial to be copyrightable is not straightforward. Don't try it without competent legal advice. If you haven't received competent legal advice, you've probably made a mistake at some point. -- Matthew Garrett | mj...@srcf.ucam.org -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Mon, Jul 09, 2012 at 10:27:37PM +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote: On Mon, 9 Jul 2012 20:52:23 +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: Revision control or some sort of out-of-band tracking. It's the project's responsibility, not the copyright holder's. That's hardly feasible and not accurate enough either (if it comes to line numbers, changing the RC software, importing from source tarball for a forked project, tracking down when lines get removed or replaced, …). For any code modification, the committer would need to check whether he's about to remove an external person's contribution and then drop that person from the list of copyright holders. [insert Impossible Mission title music here] This isn't the copyright holder's problem. This is very much the responsibility of anyone who wants to change the license afterwards. If you're not able to keep track of all your copyright holders then changing the license is something you should only do with the aid of good lawyers. -- Matthew Garrett | mj...@srcf.ucam.org -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Licensing change: Audacious - GPLv3 -- BSD
On Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 10:56 PM, Matthew Garrett mj...@srcf.ucam.org wrote: If you're not able to keep track of all your copyright holders then changing the license is something you should only do with the aid of good lawyers. While the pendantics do have a pendantic point, in practice the mere *cost* of demonstrating that you have standing should bring some reasonableness to any potential proceedings. And judges, as experienced lawyers, are often practical people -- claimants with trivial patches should, and are very likely to, get a fairly short hearing. Mores and community practice matter. So I do what I consider to be positive and socially-responsible: respect and follow the major contributors' desires. cheers, m -- martin.langh...@gmail.com mar...@laptop.org -- Software Architect - OLPC - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
