Quoting Felipe Sateler (2017-12-19 23:52:55) > On Tue, 19 Dec 2017 15:41:00 +0100, Jonas Smedegaard wrote: >> Quoting Felipe Sateler (2017-12-19 14:20:42) >>> Sometimes the license requires listing the copyright holders. In >>> those cases, the list of holders must be present in the copyright >>> file. In the rest, there is no need to list them. Only the license >>> matters. >>> >>> .oO( should the copyright file be renamed to license to avoid this >>> eternal discussion? ) >> >> Tracking copyright holders is an essential prerequisite for tracking >> licensing, because only a license granted by the copyright holder(s) >> of a work is of any use to us (and our users). > > I suspect you are setting an impossibly high bar for determining the > license of a work. We can (and do) rely on upstream telling us the > truth when they say the work is of a certain license, and that > contributions from third parties have been accepted under that > license. I suspect you read more into my words than I (intended to) put there. I did not imply that we need to hunt down and get physical documentation attesting copyright. By "tracking" I merely meant that we should keep track of which parts of the source code correlates with which (upstream claims of) copyright and (only their) licensing grants. Or that in case of relaxing (e.g. assuming a copyright holder from metadata like commit messages) then we should document in what way we are arguably "inventing facts". > If what you say were true, no non-trivial piece of software would be > distributable. I disagree - but maybe because I don't understand your logic. Care to elaborate (sorry, I didn't get your meaning from below questions)? > Is your copyright credited on all the packages where you have > submitted patches? Not explicitly in the header of all (substantial) patches that I have authored, no. I am not perfect, but I try. I do believe that others examining my packaging work can sensibly assume from my copyright claims of packaging files in general, that (substantial) patches authored by me is copyright me with same license as the packaging in general. If they cannot safely assume that, then they will need to get in touch with me to verify - just as I will have to do with our upstreams. Was your point in asking that question something else? > There's plenty of software in the archive where there is uncredited > copyright, and that is not a problem because the contribution was made > under a given license. Care to provide some examples? I strongly believe you mistaken: Code licensed but without a copyright holder is not really licensed. [ I am not a lawyer, yada yada... ] - Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private
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