Fabio Scotoni <fa...@esse.ch> wrote: > > According to the Berne Convention, even though you cannot give away > > the moral rights that constitute the core of Copyright, you can give > > away the economic rights arising from a Work. Some publishers of > > software (for example the FSF) ask for that. But in OpenBSD, we > > strongly encourage original authors to retain all economic rights > > arising from their Works, and simply grant a standardized license > > themselves, such that OpenBSD can distribute the Works. > > Thank you for clarifying. > > Since I wasn't aware how documentation (and code) from outsiders > contributing to OpenBSD would be treated, I figured I should err on the > side of caution and not grant any license in the initial publication. > Requests with regards to assignment of rights could have been possible, > after all. > Granting the economic rights becomes somewhat meaningless if there is a > pre-existing liberal license and you had wished that the rights had been > granted exclusively to a single entity. > > > The OpenBSD > > project doesn't own any rights and isn't even a legal entity. > > (That's why I said "to an OpenBSD contributor", not "to the OpenBSD > project" in my previous e-mail, actually.)
We have all stood on the shoulders of giants. And if we do enough work, we too will have others standing on our shoulders. I think it's really crappy when the contribution of the individual gets hidden, due to the organization or company wanting their name placed in a copyright notice. That makes sense when it is a work-for-hire, but most of what is in OpenBSD isn't work-for-hire. OpenBSD is the aggregate of contributions from many thousands of individuals, and their names should be praised at the top of each file.
