Re: Why do we list individual copyright holders?
On Sun, Dec 24, 2017 at 6:28 PM, Thomas Goirand wrote:
> All I'm saying, is that copyright holder information / author list is
> mandatory if the license mandates it. The case of an anonymous author
> shows we've accepted software in Debian without a copyright holder.
Software with an anonymous author still has a copyright holder, who
might be anonymous or not. Software that has been released into the
public domain is the only thing that can show we've accepted software
in Debian without a copyright holder (and we definitely have accepted
that).
> I still don't understand why. I understand why it's a re-assurance that
> the shipped license is correct, but I don't see why otherwise.
The copyright holder is the the person who grants Debian/etc a license
to do things, the license grant is the connection between the
copyright holder and their intention to allow actions that are
normally blocked by copyright law. There is no license without either
the copyright holder relinquishing their copyright and placing the
software into the public domain (where possible), or the copyright
holder explicitly granting a license. Without knowledge of as much of
the whole chain from author to copyright holder to license grant (or
public domain dedication) to license as possible I wonder if we can
confidently call anything Free Software, at least until copyright law
is repealed.
--
bye,
pabs
https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
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