Re: fresh review of: CDDL
On 9/10/05, Gervase Markham <gerv@mozilla.org> wrote:
> Steve Langasek wrote:
> > I have verbal assurance from the Mozilla folks that it is, actually,
> > regardless of what the various copyright statements in the tree
> > currently claim.
>
> I don't know who assured you of that, but it's not true. In my copious
> spare time, I'm attempting to complete the Mozilla relicensing effort.
> It's about 99% done, but not 100%, and the remaining 1% includes code
> that ships in the default build of all our products.
Would it be out of place to ask what code, exactly, is involved? If
some portion is actually coherent enough to constitute a work of
authorship by itself, or was contributed as an extract from another
work of authorship, then perhaps it would be less effort to rewrite
it. If it is instead a laundry list of ten-line patch submissions by
people who can't now be contacted, with no use other than to fix some
bug that never occurred anywhere but in Mozilla/Netscape, then there
is no work of authorship on which copyright can be claimed to be
infringed. Fragmentary contributions without creative control do not
constitute co-authorship -- urban legend among free software
enthusiasts notwithstanding -- and I for one would not hesitate to
exercise GPL rights (such as creative synthesis at source code level
with other GPL works) if no identifiable MPL-only work of authorship
remains.
Cheers,
- Michael
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