Re: conquer relicensing
vejeta@gmail.com writes:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm new dealing with licenses and I've been trying to catch up, however
> I need advice.
>
> Edward M Barlow wrote "conquer", a middle earth multi-player curses
> based game, and posted it in USENET at comp.sources.games around 1987
> and 1988. Later Adam Bryant contributing with code and patching the
> original sources.
>
> Recently I managed to contact Ed Barlow and asked him for permission to
> relicense conquer as free software. My concerns are around the
> contributed code of Adam Bryant who I didn't manage to contact.
> Please check the original C source code of conquer v4.11 at [1] and
> look that three files (navy.c, sort.c, and trade.c) specially the
> latter have a notice like this:
>
> /*conquer : Copyright (c) 1988 by Ed Barlow.*/
> /*
> * The following file "trade.c" was written by Adam Bryant who
> * gives all rights to this code to Ed Barlow provided that this
> * message remains intact.
> */
>
> Could the code be relicensed as GPL v.2 or any compatible license with
> this notices?
IANAL, but this looks like an effective conveyance of copyright to me.
If it is such a conveyance, then Ed Barlow may legally make the file
available under any license that he (Ed Barlow) wishes.
Insofar as the message is an explanation of copyright providence, I
see no problem including it (and being required to preserve it) under
GPLv2, BSD, MIT or a number of other licenses.
It poses practical problems, I think regardless of license, for people
who wish to reuse only portions of the file -- in terms of how they
should describe the copyright on the reused portions -- but the chance
of that seems low enough to cross that bridge when one comes to it.
Michael Poole
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