Re: Eduardo Chappa's comments about his (al)pine patches
On 31/10/2007, Asheesh Laroia <debian-legal@asheesh.org> wrote:
> "I myself do not care what people do with the patch as
> long as they don't claim ownership."
As has been pointed out in the bug report thread, it would be better
for all concerned if the author could just come out with a slightly
more positive statement - "permissive", rather than just
"non-restrictive", as it were.
That said, if the patch were included in Debian (and other distros) on
the basis of the quoted statement, and then the author tried to assert
his copyright against users of the patch, then there'd be a strong
argument (at least in some legal systems) that he was prevented from
doing so under the doctrine of estoppel. (See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel.)
My gut feeling is this is OK, but I don't know what the general
approach is to relying on such statements. Does anyone know of any
other Debian packages that include such vague licensing terms?
John
(IAAL but TINLA)
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